


Roux Reine

by BethNottingham



Series: Red Queen [2]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Actually it's a little bit worse in a few chapters, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Archaeology, Background delena, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Development, F/M, Family History, I wasn't trying to be correct, If Caroline was the main character, Julie Plec can fight me, Klaroline, Klaroline-centric, Non-Explicit Sex, Something something artistic license, The vikings got here first, Yes I know the title is incorrect in French
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:13:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 42,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22100026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BethNottingham/pseuds/BethNottingham
Summary: Red Queen Season II. Summer has kicked off, and everything's back to normal in the Mikaelson-Forbes residence. Except for some archaeological findings, long-lost family members, and everyone and their werewolf flying to Europe. Anywhere but in Mystic Falls, these things would be no problem...Klaroline. Cross-posted to fanfic.
Relationships: Caroline Forbes/Klaus Mikaelson
Series: Red Queen [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1584871
Comments: 2
Kudos: 92





	1. Be Careful What You Wish For

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everybody! Welcome to Red Queen, Season II! If you're brand new to this story, I'd highly recommend checking out Red Queen, Season I first (Which is, appropriately, entitled "Red Queen"). Quite a few elements of this story will make very little sense if you haven't read its predecessor. It kicks off with the hybrid massacre in Season 4, but with a twist—the massacre was prevented. And as a result, Klaroline happened! Oh, and some other plot. Kind of a lot of other plot.
> 
> But anyway, back to the Klaroline, when we left them, Caroline had just graduated, Jeremy had just come back to life, and with the closing of the veil, the world has gone back to its wacky imitation of normalcy. Caroline and Klaus are growing extremely close, but with Caroline recovering from a devastating tragedy, they're taking things slowly. However, she does live in his house. (Which it right about the part where it first becomes confusing to anyone who has not read Red Queen, which is 26 chapters long and definitely worth your time, if I do say so myself!)
> 
> A quick note, in the TVD book series, the town is called Fell's Church, rather than Mystic Falls. Falls Church, VA is a real place, so I'm using that approximate location for Mystic Falls, if anyone's interested.
> 
> Also, warning, the first chapter contains (disappointed/sad/beginning-of-the-end) Forwood. This is a Klaroline fic, first, second, third and last, but this stuff is important to both character development and plot, so it does pop up.

_Caroline pulled into the school parking lot, put the car in park, and after waiting a moment, turned off the engine and dropped her keys in her purse. Out of habit, she rested her hands back on the steering wheel, body still while her mind spun wildly._

' _Happy damn birthday to me, I guess,' she thought sourly. Her special day couldn't have possibly fallen at a worse time. She was undead, the town was overrun by hybrid jackasses, her dad hated her, and she and Tyler were in a fight over his particular supernatural drama._

_She supposed it wouldn't have bothered her quite so much if he could at least admit he had a problem, but he was so flippant about it._

" _It's better," he'd said after the disastrous homecoming party, and she'd sat there on her bed in shock at the words coming out of his mouth. "If being sired to Klaus is the price I have to pay to never have to go through the pain of turning again, then so be it." She'd been avoiding him ever since. It just didn't make sense to her, that the guy she'd known all her life, who she'd helped through his darkest hours, Matt's best friend… was one of the "bad guys" now. She wasn't sure what she would do when she saw him next._

 _She knew that maybe she was overreacting. Not to the sire-bond issue—that was a serious problem—but to Tyler's attitude. It wasn't that he didn't care; he was probably just trying to accept what was happening to him in order to protect himself emotionally. If he let himself wallow in worry, it wouldn't solve anything, and it would only hurt him more. But, the fact that he didn't seem to have any plan about what to_ do _about it—_ that _scared her. Was he seriously going to live like this for the rest of his life—literally, the rest of eternity?_

_Was her relationship with him going to be another casualty of the supernatural, like her relationship with Matt, her relationship with her dad, the recently repaired relationships with her mom and Bonnie?_

_Caroline was good at being a vampire. She'd picked up on everything with precocious quickness, and—secretly—rather enjoyed the fact that she was strong enough to kick the ass of anyone who upset her, even if she didn't normally indulge in that kind of behavior. But… it was from the moment she turned, all of the little strings that had tied her to the people around her were being severed one by one. She hadn't even had time to outlive her loved ones yet, but she was already losing them._

_And that, more than anything, terrified her._

_She'd convinced herself that she could do eternity like this—strong, ageless, bloodthirsty, in desperate need of magical sunblock—but she didn't think she could handle eternity alone. She was a social being; Tyler had often joked about how she had a werewolf pack-mentality, despite her vampirism. But what was she supposed to do if her pack—her family—all left her?_

_It was at that moment that she looked up and caught Tyler's eye. He was sitting on one of the picnic tables, patiently waiting for her to get out of her car. Unbuckling her seat belt, she wondered how long she'd sat there, lost in thought. Probably not more than two or three seconds, she reflected as she opened the door, slung her bag over her shoulder, and stepped onto the asphalt of the parking lot. Her brain did work at vampire speed, after all._

" _I can't talk to you," she said once she got within normal human hearing range of Tyler. It was too soon after their fight, and today was just… not a good day. She couldn't do drama today._

" _I know you're upset," Tyler started, raising a placating hand, "but..."_

" _Upset?" she hissed, his 'now don't overreact to little things' tone rousing her temper. "You almost got Jeremy killed! And before you ask me to understand, or to support you, can you at least tell me what you're planning to do about your sire-bond to Klaus?"_ Just give me something—some reason to hope that we might eventually be all right. Just prove to me that this means something to you—that I mean enough to you that you'd be willing to fight for me. That's all I'm asking for. That's all I'm asking for.

" _There is nothing that I can do about it, Caroline!" Tyler exclaimed in frustration, and Caroline's heart sank right down to the tips of her shoe heels. "That's the point. I just wanted you to know that I understand why you can't be with me. Even though I want to put you first, before anyone, I can't. I'll never be able to. And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I just want you to know that."_

_He couldn't have known what she'd been thinking. He couldn't have known how much his word choice hurt her. But it did, and for a tense half second, she thought she was going to literally burst into tears right there. He was giving up on her too. Because what they had together wasn't important enough to merit a few hours of research or a conversation with a witch._

" _I'm sorry, too," she finally choked out. Pride kept her emotions in check, but that was all. Right then and there it was officially settled—she wasn't going to school that day. She was going to get back in her car, get out onto the road, and put as many miles as she could between her and all of this._

_Tyler reached into his backpack and pulled out a small drawstring bag._

" _Happy birthday," he said softly as he pressed it into her hand. Then he turned and walked away. Caroline stared at his retreating back for a long, painful moment before she forced herself to stop thinking of morbid imagery. She opened up the bag and poured a little pile of metal rings into her hand. It was a charm bracelet, with her initials, a football helmet, and a cheerleader's megaphone hanging off of it at intervals._

_She regarded it sadly. Her human life, her passions, her relationships… Perhaps it was fitting that as a vampire, she could easily have crushed it into a handful of powdered metal. Instead of destroying it, however, she carefully fastened it around her wrist. She wanted to pretend for a little bit longer that she didn't destroy everything she touched._

_Then she whirled on her heel, got back in her car, and floored the accelerator to get out onto the closest highway._

_She made the two hour drive to Richmond in about an hour and a quarter, disregarding all traffic laws and driving in a manner that generally would have made her police officer mother's hair turn grey, despite the fact that she knew her daughter was indestructible with unparalleled senses and light-speed reflexes. For lack of a more defined plan, she wandered into Regency Square Mall, meandering in and out of stores and trying on clothes that all looked fabulous on her, although she didn't buy a single thing. Her funk was too deep to allow her to fully enjoy anything._

_Hours later, she'd spent exactly twenty-three dollars and sixty-four cents, on lunch for herself, and a pack of dress-socks for her mom. What a fun birthday. She'd considered compelling the people at Zales to sell her a diamond infinity pendant at clearance price, but stopped herself. She'd feel awful later, and where would she wear diamonds, anyway? Besides, the infinity symbol looked cool, but if she really thought about it, it was too depressing._

_She was in no great rush to return to Mystic Falls, but didn't really have anywhere else to go, and didn't particularly want her mom to come home from work and find out that she'd been missing all day. So, she got back in her car, and headed for home, arriving only about twenty minutes after school had let out for the day. She set her purse down on the hallway table with a sigh, and then almost jumped out of her skin when Elena, Bonnie and Matt jumped out from behind the living room wall, wearing party hats and holding balloons._

" _Surprise!" They all yelled in one voice. She'd been too preoccupied with her internal drama to notice them, and had to work to force her face into a pleasantly surprised half-smile._

" _Happy birthday," Matt exclaimed with a wide grin._

" _What are you guys doing here?" Caroline asked, wondering if they'd somehow known the crazy depressing thoughts she'd been mulling over all day._

" _Well," Elena responded, holding out a large, decorated sign with the words "Happy Birthday Caroline" written on it in glitter, "You blew off school and missed our work of birthday art, so..."_

" _Change into warmer clothes," Bonnie instructed. "We're going to the Falls. S'mores, camp fire…" It was on the tip of Caroline's tongue to remind her friend that vampires didn't get cold, but she restrained herself. Taking a shot at Bonnie didn't help anything—it wasn't her fault that she was human._

" _Cake!" Elena added to the list gleefully, "Like when we were little." Except that Caroline couldn't get fat, or make herself sick off of eating too much of it. But that was a_ perk _of vampirism, she reminded herself, not a downside…_

" _Except with tequila!" Matt continued in a singsong voice, and that one made Caroline smile. She needed a little tequila. No, she needed a lot of tequila—enough to make her forget that Tyler Lockwood had ever existed. But that kind of drinking wasn't best done in a party atmosphere._

" _Thanks, guys. Really," she said graciously. "I'm just not feeling my birthday this year."_

" _I'm sorry, what?" Bonnie responded incredulously. "You've already claimed your birthday as everyone's favorite day of the year!"_

" _Yeah, and now, it's just a reminder that technically, I'm dead." Caroline shot back, with more venom than she'd intended._ Not their fault I'm a vampire _, she reminded herself sternly._ Not their fault I'm emo. Not their fault I'm in a fight with Tyler. _But their collective expressions were demanding some explanation of her incomprehensible moodiness, so she continued. "Look, I didn't even like 17. Y'know, only point to being 17 is to get to 18. It's a filler year; I'm stuck in a filler year."_

" _You're not stuck, Caroline," Elena said soothingly. It was kind of a useless thing to say, but Caroline appreciated the gesture._

" _Yeah I am," she sighed, "but it's okay. Y'know, it's all good, I'll be fine. But I just need some time to wallow in it." Two pairs of eyes started at her with worry, and one pair regarded her thoughtfully._

" _Okay," Elena nodded, eyes narrowing down to slits as her mind raced. "Well I think I have another idea."_

_-0-_

_By the time they reached the Salvatore crypt, the sun had set, and deep shadows filled the otherwise deserted graveyard._

" _Here it is!" Elena announced proudly, pushing the rusty metal door inward, and leading her friends inside._

" _This is creepy, even for us," Bonnie observed, looking around cautiously._

" _Caroline was right..." Elena explained, setting down the cake box and turning to face the others. "Technically, she's dead." She looked at Caroline and added, "Sorry." Caroline nodded. "You don't need a birthday," Elena continued, "you need a funeral. You need to say goodbye to your old life, so that you can move on with your new one."_

_There was a thought. Caroline pressed her lips together, considering that idea. It couldn't hurt anything. And the ties of her old life were being sheared away one by one anyway. Maybe it was healthy to accept that._

" _Okay." She agreed, walking up to the alter in the center of the crypt. "Here lies Caroline Forbes—"_

"— _Cheerleader, Miss Mystic Falls, third grade hopscotch champion..." Elena listed playfully, sticking a candle into the strangely out-of-place birthday cake with every word she spoke._

"… _Friend, daughter, overachiever..." Bonnie listed._

" _...Mean girl," Matt chimed in. "Sometimes, no offense," he added quickly._

" _None taken," Caroline assured him with the ghost of a laugh._

" _She was 17," Elena summed up, "and she had a really good life. So rest in peace, so that she can move forward. That's what you really need. What we all really need. Amen," she finished awkwardly, after a beat. "Or, cheers or whatever. Bonnie?"_

" _Right," Bonnie murmured, and with a flick of her fingers, lit the candles with magic._

" _Nice!" Elena exclaimed, echoing Caroline's own sentiments. She never got over how cool it was that her best friend could actually start fires with her mind._

" _Okay," Elena said, holding out the cake towards Caroline. "Make a wish."_

_Caroline closed her eyes, thinking about the people around her, thinking about that day, thinking about that most horrible thing Tyler had said, that he couldn't put her first, even if he wanted too…_

'I wish for true love, _' had flitted through her mind without her ever consciously giving the thought permission to form into words. It was stupid and childish and this was only a wish made on birthday candles—it wasn't even like she was saying a prayer to a higher power, unless there was a deity of cake she had yet to hear of. But it was the truth, she reflected as she blew out the candles and grinned at her friends. She wanted an all-consuming love from someone who could and would put her first, no matter what. She wanted real, unconditional, eternal love, even though she knew it was ridiculous and selfish and probably didn't even exist in the real world, and even if it did, it wouldn't apply to her._

_And even though she knew she would probably never get it, she felt a little bit better, admitting to herself what she naively wanted._

" _Bon appétit," she said, reaching for the cake knife._

_After that, the party dissolved into a more normal birthday-party-ish atmosphere, with cake and drinks and random conversation. After a few shots, Caroline was feeling better, and considering whether she should—without anyone noticing—leave her charm bracelet there in the crypt when they left, for symbolism's sake. But, the more she started at it, and the more she drank, the more she thought about the silly, grade-school wish she'd made._

_Of course no one would ever put her first; people were designed to put themselves and their needs first. And, no matter how things were in romance novels, there was nothing really wrong with that. Tyler needed to do what he needed to do for himself, and she needed to deal with that and do what she needed to do for herself. And then, when all of that was said and done, they needed to figure out if they could still be together, considering their life goals. That was all._

_Before she knew it, she'd sent him a text message, saying where she was. They needed to talk. She knew she was drunk, but that was mellowing her out, and maybe she could have a civil, grown-up conversation with him without losing her temper. That would be best._

" _Caroline, what are you doing?" Elena demanded quickly, and Caroline dropped her hands to her sides, trying to hide her phone in the folds of her skirt._

" _What?" She asked innocently. "Nothing."_

" _Okay," Elena snorted. "You're a bad sober liar; you're an even worse drunk liar." Well, she had her there._

" _I might have texted Tyler," Caroline admitted, wincing a little._

" _Caroline..." Elena groaned._

" _What? I'm delicate," Caroline pouted, hoping that Elena would just assume the tequila was making her decisions and drop the issue. She was just trying to be a grown-up about this, for crying out loud._

" _Give her a break!" Bonnie grumbled. "You can't control what everyone does all the time."_

_There was a moment of uncomfortable silence._

" _Wow," Elena finally said._

" _Ouch, Bon," Matt added._

" _Sorry," Bonnie sighed. "I know it's Caroline birthday, funeral or whatever but, I just feel it's really wrong that you compelled Jeremy to leave town." Caroline watched her best friends argue in a sort of detached horror, like she was witnessing it on a TV screen. Only her strings were being snipped, not theirs. What was happening here?_

" _I'm doing it to protect him, Bonnie," Elena defended irritably. "I want to give him a chance to have a quiet normal life."_

" _He should be able to choose how he wants to live it," Bonnie countered, clearly working to modulate her volume. "You're taking his choices away."_

" _Bonnie, you can't tell him," Elena said in a low voice, reading the expression on her friend's face and preempting._

" _Why?" Bonnie hissed. "Are you gonna compel me not to?"_

_Caroline made eye-contact with Matt, and a moment of mutual understanding passed between them._

" _You know, you guys are ruining a perfect funeral," Matt chided, slipping the bottle away from Elena and taking a swig himself. A subtle reminder that none of them were thinking very clearly at that moment._

" _I'm sorry," Bonnie sighed, grabbing her purse. "I'm just gonna go sleep it off or something. Happy birthday," she added in Caroline's direction before creaking open the rusty door and walking away._

_After that, things were much more somber. Elena was lost in her own thoughts, Matt was monopolizing the bottle to try and cope with what all the hell he was involved with these days, and Caroline kept constantly checking her phone, wondering if Tyler would respond, or if he was too mad about that morning. When the door creaked open again, everyone looked up, and Caroline jumped to her feet. She'd expected a text first or something._

" _Sorry," Tyler said awkwardly. "I didn't mean to crash the party."_

" _So, don't," Matt growled. He'd passed his happy stage and drank himself in to grumpiness._

" _No, it's-it's okay," Caroline stammered quickly. "Hi," she added in Tyler's direction._

" _Can I talk to you for a sec?" He asked. "It's kind of important." At her nod, he led her out of the crypt and into the forest surrounding the cemetery._

" _I take it all back," he said without preamble. "Everything I said this morning. Klaus can't control me. Not when it comes to you. I won't let him." His sudden about-face had Caroline backing off mentally._

" _Tyler, it's okay," she assured him, feeling like he was suddenly moving way too fast. That, or the tequila had stopped talking and left her on her own to resolve this awkward situation. "Maybe we just weren't meant to be together. Maybe we just have to accept that and move on."_

" _I'm not moving on from anything," Tyler growled, putting his hands on either side of her face. "I love you."_

" _What?" Caroline asked stupidly, her mind flashing back to the ridiculous wish she'd made. There was no way…_

_But when his lips claimed hers, she relaxed, and thought that maybe, maybe this was enough. He was doing what she'd asked; he was willing to fight for her, willing to meet her halfway. She kissed him back enthusiastically, thinking that perhaps this could work out after all, if they were both willing to compromise._

_It was right about then that his fangs nipped into the soft skin of her neck._

" _Ouch!" She grumbled as he pulled away, shock and horror etched across his face. "What the hell?" Slowly, irritation was morphing into fear. "What just happened?" She demanded in a more serious voice, although she already knew the answer—the two innocent little drops of blood slowly making their way towards her collarbone were answer enough._

" _Oh, no," Tyler gasped._

" _Did you just bite me?" She shrieked, realization finally making it through her liquor-and-passion-befuddled brain._

" _Oh my god," he exclaimed, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."_

" _Oh my god!" She screamed. "Just get away from me! Get away from me!" But that wouldn't fix anything—the infection wouldn't get better from his presence being removed. But Tyler backed off a few paces, and then sped away, leaving Caroline to slide down the tree trunk until she was sitting on the ground, clutching her neck in blind terror._

_She wasn't sure how long she sat there, hyperventilating and listening to her own heartbeat, which was, moment by moment, speeding deadly poison through her veins. She began to wonder disjointedly if it was better that she died here and now, rather than watch everyone she loved leave her. At that thought, the image of Tyler's retreating back that morning burned itself across her vision, and she found herself clutching at her heart._

_Her heart was made of brittle glass, each shard tethered to a person. Her mom, her dad, Elena, Bonnie, Matt, Tyler, Stefan, the list was long, and the stings were many. But one by one, each was snipped clean through with a pair of huge scissors, or maybe they were vampire fangs, she didn't know._

Snip! _Her dad was burning her alive._

Snip! _Bonnie was rejecting her after she turned._

Snip! _Matt couldn't deal with her supernatural world._

Snip! _Tyler was walking away, content to live his own life in slavery rather than fight for freedom, for her._

Snip!Snip! _Elena got Stefan back, and the two of the left town together when people started to notice Stefan wasn't aging._

Snip! _She graduated school and all of her normal friends left her, one by one,_ snip _by_ snip _by_ snip _._

 _Her mom, frizzy white hair splayed out on her pillow, looked up at her with bleary eyes sunk far into a waxy, wrinkled face. Her mouth said "I love you," but instead of a quavering little old lady voice, it was a loud, echoing_ snip!

_And then she was free-floating through space, untethered, with nowhere to go and no one left._

_She heard Matt's voice shouting, but it wasn't her name, it was her mother's. Then her mother was demanding to know what happened. What had happened? Caroline didn't know. She was still floating, bobbing around the ceiling of her bedroom, looking down at her own corpse. Better this way. Better this way? Was it? She truly didn't know._

" _Caroline, honey, can you hear me?" her mother's worried voice asked. Better for her, but not better for her mom. Parents shouldn't have to bury their kids. But kids shouldn't have to live forever._

" _I'm sorry, Mom," she sobbed, and that was when she realized she had a mouth, and a body, and was still affected by gravity and lying in her own bed._

" _She keeps hallucinating or something," Matt's voice said from a long way off, but she couldn't tell from what direction. It had to be really, really far, though. He wouldn't come near her. She was alone. Forever alone._

_Slowly, the hallucinations relaxed their grip, like she was experiencing sleep cycles and dropping out of REM sleep. Vaguely, she was aware that the venom was telling her lies, but she couldn't sort out the lies from the truths. If her mind had ever formed a truth in her short immortal life, which was dubious when she was this jacked up on deadly magic venom. She made an effort to breathe evenly._

'True love doesn't exist,' _every evil fairy from every fairy tale whispered in her ear._ 'Wishes never come true.' _Were they fairy voices, or her own voice._ 'I want to die.' _That was certainly her own voice, but not aloud, she was pretty sure. Maybe it was her voice from when she was seven or eight—it sounded too young._

'I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down.' _The Big, Bad Wolf was outside, snarling and snapping his jaws, eyes gleaming. But, no, she realized as a few more levels of consciousness propped her mind up to allow her to experience what was happening outside in the real world. That wasn't what he'd said, but the Wolf_ was _outside; she recognized Klaus's voice even though she'd never spoken to him directly. Was he there to make sure she was dead? That was stupid. She was as good as dead already. Besides, she was nobody, in the grand supernatural scheme of things. Why would he care enough to kill her? Maybe it was just because he was pure evil—that would explain a lot._

" _I know how this game works," her mom was saying. "You want something in return." But in return for what? Wasn't it obvious he was here to kill her? Why else would he be trying to come inside the house?_

_What if it was her mom he wanted to kill? That panicked thought shocked her into almost full lucidity._

" _Just your support," Klaus was saying downstairs. Her mom would see through that one immediately…_

" _Come in."_

 _Caroline's heart stopped for a minute_. What?

_The blank shock lasted for several seconds, and was rooted so deeply in her already fragile mind that it seemed only an instant later that he was standing in her doorway, in the flesh, contemplating her thoughtfully._

" _Are you going to kill me?" She asked weakly. She sounded more frightened than she'd intended. Or than she felt, really._

" _On your birthday? He murmured incredulously. "You really think that low of me?"_

" _Yes," Caroline snapped, hoping he'd drop the disturbing nice-guy act and just rip her heart out already. He walked forward, and against her will, her heart sped up in fear. But he only leaned over to get a better look at her neck._

" _That looks bad," he observed. "My apologies; you're what's known as collateral damage, it's nothing personal." Why was he even bothering to talk to her? She wouldn't be alive to remember it anyhow._

" _I love birthdays," he commented, touching the charm bracelet still hanging around her sweat-drenched wrist._

" _Yeah," she snorted sarcastically. "Aren't you like...a billion, or something?" No point in censoring herself—he was literally there to murder her. But instead of getting mad, he grinned._

" _Well you have to adjust your perception of time when you become a vampire, Caroline," he informed her, as if they were old friends. "Celebrate the fact that you're no longer bound by trivial human conventions. You're free."_

_For a moment, his words actually rang true, but in a much darker way. She was free. She'd been cut lose, and now she had nothing tying her to this world. But now, she was leaving it. And somehow, that was almost okay._

" _No," she sighed, keeping up the bizarre conversation just for the hell of it. "I'm dying."_

_Klaus sat down on the bed next to her, and she was surprised by how normal he seemed. He didn't break the bedframe by dint of massive supernatural weight, or conjure a throne out of midair. The venom and tequila were doing her thinking for her again, she realized a little grumpily._

" _And I could let you die, if that's what you want," he whispered. What had he seen in her face? Did he know what she'd been thinking? Or did werewolf venom make everyone depressed and suicidal?_

" _If you really believe your existence has no meaning," he continued thoughtfully. "I thought about it myself, once or twice over the centuries, truth will be told." There was something in his eyes, a hollowness, that prevented her from doubting him. But why would he tell her this? Probably because he knew she wouldn't live long enough to repeat it._

" _But I'll let you in on a little secret," he added, eyes sparkling again. "There is a whole world out there, waiting for you. Great cities and art and music, genuine beauty." It was as he said that that her ears picked up the fast rhythms of her mom's and Matt's heartbeats downstairs. She'd hallucinated that they were gone, but they weren't, not yet. Most of her relationships were still in tact._

" _You can have a thousand more birthdays," Klaus was saying. She could have the next few decades, she could have time, she could have more chances to fix things with the people whose strings had already been cut…_

" _All you have to do is ask." Tears gathered in Caroline's eyes, and she blinked, letting them fall._

" _I don't wanna die," she choked out, and realized how much she meant it. She didn't want to say goodbye to everyone, not yet._

_He slid his hand under her head to lift it, and offered her his wrist, exposed by his pushed-up sleeve._

" _There you go, sweetheart," he murmured soothingly as she looked up at him, not quite believing that he would really do this. "Have at it."_

_Needing no second invitation, she sank her fangs into his flesh, and the hunger born from the venom made his blood taste like the best thing that had ever passed her lips in her short life. She gripped his arm, holding it in place, gulping down big mouthfuls._

" _Happy birthday, Caroline," she heard him murmur._

_When Caroline awoke the next morning, the disjointed events of the previous day seemed more like dreams than reality. She had to glance at her clock just to make sure that her birthday had even happened in the first place. As she stretched and rubbed at her neck, she ran through her memories, trying to sort out truth from tequila-soaked fiction. She'd gone to the mall, she'd gotten drunk with her friends in a graveyard… Everything after that was probably just one really bizarre dream. Maybe Matt had given her a joint. That would actually explain a great many things._

_That was when she saw the little rectangular velvet-covered box, tied with a creamy white ribbon, sitting innocently on her nightstand. No one had given her any presents in little jeweler's boxes, she was at least_ fairly _sure. Just how stoned had she been, she wondered as she picked up the box and pulled off the ribbon._

 _Inside, there was a little note written on old-fashioned parchment. "_ From Klaus _," it said in unfamiliar slanted writing. She swallowed, hard. Apparently, the whole werewolf-venom fiasco had been real after all._

_Under the note lay a white-gold infinity-symbol bracelet, encrusted in tiny diamonds. She gasped silently as she ran her fingers across it. It was beautiful—far more gorgeous than the necklace she'd almost ripped off from the jeweler yesterday._

_Then she had an odd moment—which, afterwards, she blamed on residual effects from werewolf venom. It was like she could feel another new thread attached to her heart. It slid in and tied itself in a simple square knot, laying innocently among the others. One more tie to another person. It occurred to her briefly that perhaps one had to adjust one's perceptions of a great many things, when one was a vampire, and that relationships with others was one of those things._

_Then, shocked at herself for even thinking it, she snapped the box shut and quickly set it back down on the night table. Obviously, Klaus—the baddest of the bad guys—was just trying to make nice with Stefan. That was all._

_And this… this was creepy, she decided. Definitely on the darkest end of the creepy spectrum. She rolled out of bed and got into the shower, hoping to use hot water and steam to dissolve any and all weird thoughts of Klaus being an actual person with feelings._

_It wouldn't occur to her until almost a year later what a sick sense of irony the birthday-cake gods had._


	2. Skeletons in the Closet

Klaus was going to kill Elena Gilbert.

It was an old sentiment, attached to an old plan—her number had been up from the moment he returned to town over a year ago, and she'd been living on borrowed time ever since then.

Her friends had saved her from dying in the ritual, and Klaus had kept her alive for her doppelganger blood. Once she'd transitioned into a vampire, he'd had little use for her, unless they found the cure. He'd humored Stefan, letting her live, but throughout the Great Cure Quest she'd gotten so far on his nerves that he'd been on the edge of murdering her himself, several times. When she'd turned off her emotions and simultaneously made Rebekah more irritating _and_ had a go at Caroline, the only reason he hadn't ripped her heart from her chest was that he'd been focused on Caroline's fragile health, which wouldn't have been improved by the death of her best friend.

Now, he was beginning to seriously regret his tolerance.

It had been two weeks since Caroline had graduated High School, two weeks since her last conversation with her mother, and in those two weeks she had, in true Caroline fashion, pulled herself up by her bootstraps and moved forward with her life. That included a bunch of summer-kick-off meetings for the committees she hadn't rotated off of when she got her diploma, so she was away about as much as she normally was during the school year. That also included getting closer with him in her free time. Candle-light dinners, him giving her a real, in-depth tour of his gallery, several movies that she felt he hadn't lived until he'd seen, and three different times when they'd been making out for so long that—despite his assurance that he wouldn't push her faster than she wanted to go—his body, at least, had been one-hundred percent convinced that they were about to go all the way.

And that brought him back to the Elena Gilbert murder plan. Because he and Caroline had yet to go all the way, and that was almost entirely Elena's fault. The first time, she'd called in ecstasy to explain that Bonnie had brought Jeremy back. The second time, she'd been coming to pick Caroline up for dorm-furnishing shopping, an appointment which Caroline had completely forgotten about until the doorbell rang. And the third time had actually been Damon calling Klaus about something useless, but since Damon was dating Elena, and it was the third time in a row, it was still her fault by proxy. The universe was conspiring mercilessly against the two of them, and Elena Gilbert was its willing accomplice.

Unfortunately, even if he could ignore the pain that Elena's death would cause Caroline, he had to admit to himself on a logical level that killing her best friend was counterproductive to getting into her pants. And, really, if she'd wanted to carry on after the interruptions were dispensed with, she would have.

It took a lot of self-control not to push this, because he wanted it—wanted her—so badly it was almost stronger than his craving for blood, at times. He also had to admit that there was a confusing flipside to his craving of her. Sometimes, all he could think about was sex, but other times, it was a simpler, purer desire; something he barely remembered from when he'd been an innocent human. At those times, he just wanted her scent, the sound of her heartbeat, the faint warmth of her beside him. This feeling surprised him whenever it happened, since he hadn't thought he was capable of simply desiring _closeness_ in hundreds of years.

Fortunately for her, and unfortunately for him, she'd managed to get her nightmares under control after graduation, so she was no longer crawling into bed with him for comfort. But, that did mean she was getting better sleep, and was in a happier mood. Klaus preferred her that way, despite the cost to himself.

On the upside, Silas was rotting in a safe at the bottom of the quarry, and the veil to the Other Side had been closed, so the supernatural drama taking up so much of their time over the last few months was over and done with. With Stefan, Bonnie and Matt out of town, and Elena and Damon exuding a sickening amount of hormones into their environment, he had very little rivalry for Caroline's attention.

Unfortunately, though, now it was Klaus who had a great deal of time on his immortal hands. Stefan had driven off the edge of the Earth, and none of Klaus's siblings were available to alleviate his boredom when Caroline was out; both his older brother and little sister were in Europe having sex romps with vampires younger than themselves, and his younger brother was still daggered and coffined in the basement, where he was going to remain for at least the next century.

And that was how, on a lovely June afternoon, the wealthy immortal Hybrid found himself going through his mother's clothes and accessories, decluttering with his own two hands.

Of course, putting it so simply made it sound menial, but going through things owned by a witch who wanted him, his family and his entire race extinct was a little more complicated than tossing her garments in a box for the thrift shop. Anything with silk in it—even a single thread—could easily be spelled. Cotton was also iffy. Anything synthetic wouldn't hold a spell for more than a couple of days, if that, so several of Esther's shirts and a few of her pants went into a haphazard pile headed for the nearest thrift shop.

Jewelry and accessories were the major issue. He carefully examined every shining thing he found in her chambers, discarding rhinestones, but passing every other item, however innocent in appearance, over to Terry for more thorough inspection. The middle-aged witch sat comfortably in Esther's rocking chair, looking even witchier than usual, with some crocheting spread across her lap to keep her hands busy when she wasn't needed, and her salt-and-pepper hair in a slightly messy bun at the nape of her neck, decorated with a sprig of herbs behind her ear.

Klaus knew that technically he could've just compelled somebody to do this sort of menial thing, but paranoia was in his nature, and there was always the chance—however faint—that they might somehow be immune, whether through prior compulsion, as in Caroline's case, through training, like her father, or else through substance. Aside from the possibility of cursed items, the rules for what counted as a witch's talisman were often quite foggy. Better to just use some of his free time and do the job himself.

"This looks dark," he murmured, handing a gold serpent bracelet with topaz eyes to Terry, who set down her yarn and hooks to run her hands along the carved scales.

"Magic suppressant charm," she announced after a moment, setting the bracelet in a basket to her left with other non-dangerous artifacts. "Useful for a witch who wants to conceal her true nature, although there aren't a lot of situations one would need them in 21st Century America—not a lot of witch burnings going on these days."

"Wonder why she bothered to make it, then," Klaus mused as he dug through the jewelry box.

"Old habits, maybe?" Terry suggested, taking a heavy silver ring with a green stone from the Hybrid's fingers and immediately dropping it to the hard wood floor with a hiss. "If she made this one herself, she did it in her first life," she murmured, pulling the herbs out of her hair and digging a piece of chalk out of her sewing bag. "Magic that dark takes more than a couple of months to ferment."

Klaus backed off a few steps, watching her draw runes in a pentagram around the ring. A wise decision, as, a moment later, the whole shape burst into blue flames. She tossed a couple of leaves into the blaze, made a swirling motion with her hand, and muttered an incantation. A shockwave strong enough to fluff the covers on the bed and toss Esther's slippers across Klaus's boots erupted from the fire, and then with a poof of black smoke which hovered eerily near the ceiling, the fire went out. The stone in the ring had bled out its last tint of green, and was now a sickly milky white.

"Can't deny, the woman had skill," Terry murmured, impressed, as she picked up the ring, touching it only with an old handkerchief, and tossed it in what would appear, to the untrained eye, to be an ordinary terracotta flower pot with a few odd symbols painted in red-brown ink around the rim. The ring clattered down to join several other previously spelled artifacts. So far, the most dangerous had still been the seemingly harmless pair of earrings that would suck the life force out of the wearer, but on a delay, so that for the first two hours of wearing them, the victim—likely Rebekah—wouldn't notice anything was wrong.

On the other hand, they had found several useful items, such as a pair of cufflinks that would prevent the wearer from lying, and a silver letter-opener enchanted to invoke the body-jump spell for limited periods of time, without other magical assistance. Half her wardrobe, it seemed, was imbued with various protective enchantments, and Klaus had already pocketed an inconspicuous ear-cuff that allowed the wearer to understand any spoken language. He had little use for it, since he'd been around long enough to simply know the tongues, but Caroline would likely find it quite handy, when she eventually decided to branch out from her constrictively young native country.

As he began to pile Esther's shoes where he could get a better look at their composition—leather was bad news, in terms of the chances that they were spelled—his phone buzzed on the dresser near his head. One text from Caroline.

[Did you know that it's possible to spend 45 entire minutes giving a presentation on why Mystic Falls needs bumpy tiles on the ends of our sidewalks? It is.]

Klaus snorted quietly with laughter. Caroline was representing the Beautification Committee at the monthly town meeting. Technically, she was rotating off of the committee, but her replacement was still getting his feet wet, so she was still attending to a few things for him.

[Did you know] he responded, [that it is possible to spend two days arguing over the color napkins to use at a state dinner? It is.] He'd have given in just to shut the horribly tedious argument down, but losing to Rebekah didn't sit well with him, and it was _his_ bloody party, to begin with.

[Heh] she responded immediately. [Touché. That does sound a lot more boring.]

[If the meeting is so incredibly dispensable that you can message me so efficiently] Klaus suggested, [then perhaps you could slip out and we could get lunch somewhere instead.] He could always get Terry to come back tomorrow—she was certainly paid well enough, and the only other employment she had at the moment was taking the occasional weekend shift at her sister's flower-and-herb shop in down town.

[I'd love to] Caroline admitted, [but my presentation is kind of important.]

[Going to convince them to plant roses in the town square, instead of marigolds?] Klaus teased. Caroline's first response was an emoji with its tongue sticking out.

[Come on] she grumbled. [It really is important. The construction people found a dead body under the Gilbert building when they were redoing the foundations last week.]

[Did Damon put it there?] Klaus asked, mostly seriously.

[Would I bother mentioning it if he did?] Caroline shot back. [They found a femur and half of a skull. Legally, they have to halt construction, call an archaeologist, and make sure they didn't hit a graveyard or a Native American burial. This is really going to throw a monkey wrench into the works, and the people paying the tab are going to want to know what the hell is going on. So, no lunch date today.]

[Damn] he responded. [It's a lovely day.] He knew he was being a little immature, but in his defense, rooting through the possessions of the woman who'd turned him into a monster, then rejected him and tried to murder him and his entire family, wasn't exactly the most emotionally restful way to spend an afternoon.

[For a picnic on your yacht?] she asked. [Come to think of it, do you own a yacht?]

[I can arrange to own one by lunch time] he responded, handing a pair of questionable boots off to Terry, and opening up the bin where Esther had kept her sheets.

"This whole bloody thing is full of herbs," he announced, sliding it across the floor towards his witch. "I don't think they're there for the scent."

"No, I'd say not," Terry responded as she began to twine the magic aura coming from the box around her fingers, winding it like yarn as she stripped the worst of it away so she could safely riffle through the linens.

[I'm not playing hooky, Richie Rich] Caroline replied. [But I'm going out to dinner with the archaeologist and his assistant tonight. You should come. Pretend to be an expert on Viking cave carvings.]

[Technically] he reminded her [I am not only an expert on Viking cave carvings, I am an authentic carver of such.]

[Stone age…]

[You're never giving up on that, are you?] he grumbled.

[Nope. Out of curiosity, when you guys did carve stuff on cave walls, did it always have deeper meaning, or were you ever just doodling?]

[If we were going to the trouble of slicing into stone with a blade, it was because we had something important to record. Any "doodling" was restricted to charcoal and bits of birch bark. I did own a sketchbook—pretty rare, back then—but only my best stuff went in there.]

[Did you keep it?]

[I left it in our home when we abandoned the place. It's dust by now, as any archaeologist will tell you.]

[That's too bad. Would've been cool to see what you did when you were a kid.]

[Cool for you, maybe. I don't even remember what kind of childish attempts I had in there.]

[Hey, you've seen all MY embarrassing baby pictures. This would be the closest equivalent.]

[Too bad] he sent off with a little smirk.

[We're meeting Dr. Kieran at The Grill at 7. Gtg, my presentation's up next.]

[Break a leg*, sweetheart.]

[Hopefully they'll cooperate willingly] she responded, and Klaus snorted before locking his phone and stuffing it back into his pocket.

'Thousand-year-old teenager, with that cell phone,' Terry thought, shaking her head as she robbed the thick black ashes from the aura she'd just destroyed off of her hands and into the flower pot.

-0-

_Water swirling, total darkness, arms and legs thrashing, no strength, can't breathe, soundless scream, bubbles, then water, just more water… Soothing death, heartbeat stills, body goes limp. Only to awaken all over again._

Katherine awoke gasping raggedly for air, kicking outward with her arms and legs as though she really thought she was confined to the space of a tiny underwater safe.

"Katerina?" Elijah asked sleepily. "What's the matter? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she whispered back when she could trust her voice again. She rolled over to face him. "Just a dream. Jet lag, probably."

"Your skin is ice cold," he murmured stroking her face gently. "What did you dream of that gave you such horror?"

"Drowning," she answered, and it was the truth—mostly. Dreaming of one old flame while in bed with another—and on a European vacation, no less—wasn't exactly good form.

"Perhaps swimming tomorrow isn't the best of plans," the Original murmured as he pulled his lover closer, wrapping his arms comfortingly around her.

"I'm sure it'll be fine," she assured him softly. "Dreams are just dreams, after all." And the only drowning Stefan was doing was of his sorrows, in a bar, with a lot of bourbon, she reminded herself sternly. There was no reasonable reason to think anything else. "Go back to sleep," she whispered, giving Elijah a light kiss on the lips before settling down to do just that herself.

-0-

"It's a long shot, Aunt Marguerite," the young man sighed into his phone as he made his way through the crowd in the wake of his tall, iron-grey-haired boss. "We don't even know for sure if she had any lying around—or if it's the right ruin. And I doubt the town of Mystic Falls is going to let us tear up their entire shopping center looking for something like that. Don't get your hopes up too far."

"I know," Marguerite Dalmira assured her nephew. "But reports said there was an unusually high amount of magical activity in that area on Resurrection Eve. If it's even a faint possibility, we have to try."

"I understand," the man responded, ending the call and slipping his phone back into his pocket, running his other hand through his thick blonde hair. He knew the witch in question would have been friendly with his coven, had she lived long enough. Marguerite's opinion was that the magical aura in that zone from Resurrection Eve was something like an SOS, left behind by that witch's ghost. Then, as luck would have it, a perfect excuse for getting into town had cropped up only days later.

"Don't get separated," his boss called softly. "The mayor said she'd have a cab standing by for our arrival."

"I think that's us," the younger man responded, pointing to a middle-aged fellow standing in the line of cabbies.

"Time to go meet the indigenous population," the older man said with a trace of dry humor.

'Time to save the world, if auntie is right,' the younger man thought wryly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *So, I feel like everybody knows this, but often when I think that, I'm way off. "Break a leg" means "good luck" in theatre-speak. Since she's giving an oral presentation, he's responding as though she's going to be acting, rather than any other activity. However, she's intentionally misunderstanding him in a more vampire way; "break somebody's leg and they'll do as their told, sweetheart." And it isn't like he wouldn't say something like that… Heh.


	3. Opportunity Cost

Dr. O'Connell had an abnormally long head, topped with an erratic fluff of iron-gray hair, and dominated by deep-set brown eyes. He was of average height, so, about an inch taller than Klaus—something that had happened so often in the last millennium that it had stopped bothering the immortal. He wore a dusty tweed suit and a bowtie, and had a firm handshake and a cool, professional demeanor. If Klaus had been asked to do a composite sketch of "Average Professor of Archaeology," he would have drawn this man—perhaps a bit pudgier around the middle, and with smaller, nimbler hands, but basically the same.

"Professor O'Connell, my name's Caroline Forbes," Caroline introduced herself, tucking a large folder of documents under her left arm and shaking his hand. "I'm here representing the Mystic Falls Town Council and Town Beautification Team."

"Pleased to meet you, Ms. Forbes," Dr. O'Connell responded. Professionalism oozed outward from their firmly clasped hands, and radiated around them like static. Dr. O'Connell probably had no idea she was under twenty-one, and Klaus was struck, not for the first time, by how easily eighteen-year-old Caroline seemed to slip free of her age restriction and walk among mortals and immortals alike on their own plane. The word "timeless" came to mind, and his fingers itched to try and sketch her into different time periods. She fit in remarkably well in a business environment, and in a largely vampiric environment, and although she'd tried to explain it several times, he couldn't fully understand the way she normally held herself back so much…

_Caroline riffled quickly through her closet, looking frantically for something that said "educated professional" without saying "wearing my mother's clothes." She owned a knee-length pencil skirt and a matching suit-jacket, but they weren't quite cut right—they gave her broad shoulders and blocky legs. She settled on dress pants, but every time she remembered a good shirt for the occasion—fancy enough for evening wear, but formal and appropriate enough for business—she realized it was in the wash._

" _I don't know what's wrong with what you're wearing—it was good enough for the town council, wasn't it?" Klaus muttered, leaning against the doorframe._

" _The town council have all known me since I was born," Caroline reminded him. "These guys are from_ Harvard _. They are_ slightly _more important in the wardrobe hierarchy."_

" _Speaking of Ivy League schools and SAT words," Klaus segued, tapping a handful of letters against his wrist, "my people have been fetching the post from your place, and you've_ _been receiving an overabundance of letters from Virginia Tech, MIT, John's Hopkins and Yale, to name but a few." He held up the letters as evidence._

" _If it's not from Whitmore, I don't care," Caroline responded with a shrug, pulling a blouse off the rack and holding it up to herself._

" _Now, I may be a bit out of the college loop, but Yale and MIT are pretty excellent schools, are they not?" he asked, stuffing the letters into his back pocket._

" _Yeah," she agreed flippantly as she re-hung the blouse and reached for another. "But Bonnie really wants to go to Whitmore—her grandmother used to teach there, so it kind of feels like home to her. Elena and I can go to college as many times as we want," she finished, selecting another shirt and laying it out over the pants, "but Bonnie only gets to do this stuff once. I can get into MIT next time around. It's…" she sighed and twined one of her curls around her index finger. "It's really important to me to do all of the human stuff the first time around, for the people who don't get a second time."_

_Their gazes held for a long moment, and Caroline's eyes held just an echo of remorse. Klaus didn't need to ask why. Whenever he'd suggest, playfully, in earnest, or anything on the range in between, that she let him take her to Paris or Venice or Moscow—or, more likely, all three, and then at least seventeen other places besides—she'd always remind him that she had a life here._

" _Always so selfless," was all he could say, smiling gently._

" _Well, I learned from the best," Caroline laughed. "It's hard to spend so much time with Elena Gilbert without picking a few things up." Klaus shrugged moodily, choosing not to get into it right this moment with his opinions on Elena Gilbert, although he added to the list of reasons why she was so very in the way of his and Caroline's happiness._

 _The United States was so young and cheap and bland compared to what Caroline deserved. The whole world didn't quite meet the standard he thought she ought to receive, but it was better, at least. Only his love for her kept him from pushing the point, because he_ did _know the amount of effort it took to mortgage one's own future for the protection of one's loved ones, no matter what anyone might think of him._

_And he could never quite bring himself to believe that her fair-weather friends were worth what she was giving up, because not one cell in Caroline's immortal body had been designed for ordinariness._

"This is Klaus Mikaelson," Caroline introduced him, and he stepped forward, shaking O'Connell's hand in his turn. "He's an expert on local history and cave carvings."

"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Mikaelson," Dr. O'Connell repeated.

"Please, call me Klaus," Klaus responded with his trademarked smile.

"This is my assistant, Sean Callaghan," he finished, gesturing to a young blonde man in a blue dress shirt and jeans. Sean shook both vampires' hands, then the four of them made their way to a booth and sat down. Caroline slid a thick manila file out from where she'd clamped it under her left elbow, and laid it on the table.

"What've you got for us?" Dr. Kieran asked, sliding the file towards himself, whirling it around to face right side up, and flipped it open, licking his thumb and the pad of his index finger so that he could more easily flip through the pile of pages within. Klaus's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. Caroline saw the slight change in his expression and carefully suppressed the bubble of laughter about to spill upwards from her stomach. She remembered him ranting about that habit—"In my day, people had some bloody respect for books—they studied them, they didn't salivate all over them!"—and Caroline had guffawed and imitated him saying " _in MY day_ " in her best combination of an English accent and a crotchety old person's voice.

"Business already?" Sean wined, plucking the drink menu from its holder at the inner edge of the booth. "We haven't even put in drink orders yet!"

"You know the drill, Sean," Kieran retorted, holding up a picture closer to the light. "Construction crews don't wait a long time for archaeologists to do their thing—we gotta maximize our time here."

"Actually," Caroline cut in, "here in Mystic Falls, we have a strong commitment to preserving local history. This isn't the first time we've stumbled upon something like this, and historical artifacts and sites are treated with the utmost respect. If you find you need more time, we'll get you more time."

Kieran's eyes flicked up to look at her appraisingly. She'd pulled her hair loosely back, done "natural" makeup, and opted for the pencil skirt with a yellow blouse and a long gold chain necklace; all very conservative and mature. (Personally Klaus liked her better in a seafoam green shirt she'd put back at the last minute, but he supposed there was nothing _wrong_ with the yellow one.) The archaeologist was trying to gauge how much authority this blonde girl had—it was one thing to have a pretty face showing him around and handing him a file; it was quite another to hear assurances and scheduling guarantees from a girl who, admittedly, had just graduated high school.

"That's very good news," he said without emotion.

"You should see the cave art they found near here a few years ago," Klaus jumped in, spotting Jeremy Gilbert and beckoning him over with one finger. "Not to mention the town's immense collection of founders' items. But in the meantime, I have to agree with your assistant; it's time to order drinks." Kieran's shoulders relaxed just slightly, but Klaus's tensed again as he re-wet his fingers to continue flipping through the file.

"Hey, Caroline," Jeremy greeted. "Hey guys. What can I get you started with?"

The rest of the dinner went fairly smoothly, with Sean and Caroline getting along excellently, Kieran being mostly distracted by the file but at least not getting under anyone's skin, and Klaus doing a scarily good impression of an expert in ancient art and culture, who had moved to Mystic Falls specifically to study local history. It made Caroline a little uncomfortable to realize how close to the truth that was, if one just cut the supernatural elements out of it.

Kieran remained difficult to impress, but mellowed out decently after some academic conversation and a few drinks. Caroline drank iced tea the whole time, but Jeremy started adding a shot to each glass once he realized that she couldn't drink underage in front of the Harvard big-shots. By the time the dinner ended—with Klaus insisting he pay, and Caroline murmuring "Richie-Rich" in a voice so low only a vampire could hear it—both vampires had decided that they liked Sean, but only tolerated Kieran.

"I do bloody hope they don't stay long," Klaus sighed as he drove them back to his mansion. "Kieran reminds me of an owl—big, grey, full of hot air, and with conflicting stories of knowledge and stupidity. Not to mention the way he was looking at you."

"What're you talking about?" Caroline asked in confusion, trying to remember if anything in the man's gaze had made her uncomfortable. She hadn't noticed him eyeing her or anything…

"Dismissively!" Klaus exclaimed indignantly. "He was acting like you were hardly there! I wanted to pluck his eyes out at least a bakers' dozen times. Honestly."

"Well, thanks for not doing that," Caroline chuckled. "To be fair, I _did_ just graduate high school."

"No excuse," he groused as they pulled into his driveway.

-0-

"That Caroline…"

"Is obviously involved with Klaus Mikaelson," Kieran responded as Sean mused her name aloud in the passenger seat of the car as they made their way back to the hotel. "In spite of a concerning age difference."

"I know, 'uncle,'" Sean responded, rolling his eyes. "I didn't say I was interested in her. But… She looks so familiar. I feel like I should know her, like we've met before, or maybe I know her family."

Kieran said nothing to that, but pursed his lips together into a thin line as he searched his memory for anything that might confirm his nephew's suspicion. He supposed there was something about her that tugged at the edges of his mind, but it was vague and unhelpful, and got him nowhere, so he dismissed it to be worried about later.

"I just hope that neither she nor her historian sugar daddy poke their noses too far into our work," he sighed. "We'll have enough to do without rich wannabes getting underfoot, no matter how much 'respect for antiquity' this town may boast."

"I think she's cleverer than she lets on," Sean asserted, unbuckling as they pulled into a parking space.

"I think she'll have a heart attack if she breaks a nail at the site," Kieran snapped back. "Hopefully she sticks to tour guiding and delivering files."

Especially considering the work they were really doing, there in that town of mysteries.

-0-

Klaus rarely had nightmares. At a thousand-some years old, with every trauma in the book under his belt along with centuries of switched off emotions and centuries more of cultivating evil like a precious thing within his heart, there was very little that his conscious mind couldn't deal with or process, and so it was rare that anything in his subconscious made it close enough to the surface to create a dream.

Occasionally, his memories would play out in his slumbering mind, sometimes in snapshots, sometimes in vivid 3-D technicolor, but never for long. Even dreams about Mikael were few and far between, and held little of the sting they'd possessed when he'd had them as a child in his first century of immortal life.

Once in a great while, he'd have a "normal" dream—nonsensical things blending together into a warped version of reality where clouds grew on trees and apples talked and he had to get a job driving trains or his distant cousin wouldn't be able to afford tuition. (He'd woken up after that one so disturbed both by the content and the fact that it had made so much sense to him while asleep that he'd spent the whole of the morning in his studio, painting trains—all of which he later painted over, because when he came to his senses he felt incredibly silly.) But most nights he closed his eyes, breathed deep, and aside from a vague, muted sensory experience of the world around him—common among any creature with heightened senses—he'd sleep peacefully.

But lately, lately he'd been having nightmares.

It started when Silas was roaming. An immortal big-bad coming after him was nothing new to the Original Hybrid—that predated his vampirism, for goodness sake—but when Silas had threatened Caroline specifically, that shook Klaus deep into his bones. Usually when Caroline was in danger, it was something he could personally remedy. But in the last few months, between her misadventure with the dagger and the oldest immortal in the world putting her in his crosshairs, she'd been in more danger than Klaus—no matter what he tried to tell himself—was necessarily equipped to handle.

So, for the sake of his own mental health—because worrying about things outside of his control both acknowledged that things _existed_ outside of his control and wasted valuable energy that he could otherwise employ in thinking of new ways to defeat his enemies—Klaus refrained from thinking too hard about the various possibilities of Caroline's death.

But that meant that when he closed his eyes and let his guard down, his mind supplied him with endless, awful scenarios.

Tonight's topic was prom.

Except that he was aware of everything that happened while he was under Silas's control.

_He felt his hands tighten around Caroline's upper arm, felt himself squeeze and twist, felt her bone snap horribly under his fingers, heard her howl in agony. He stood, rooted to the spot, unable to so much as twitch a single muscle as his body tormented the woman he loved. He watched Elena drive the stake gradually deeper into her, smelled the trickle of blood from the wound as it soaked into her dress._

_Then came the turning._

_It wasn't like he heard Silas's voice in his mind "telling" him to turn per say; it was more like Silas had pushed the button that the moon was meant to activate, catapulting him into werewolf form with a force as inexorable as gravity. He tried to stop it, wrapping his arms around himself and trying to hold everything in place, but all he did was push his joints in all of the wrong directions, and the bones he was trying to use to stabilize himself were the first to shatter…_

_Pain engulfed his mind, pain and carnal rage, staining his vision red and twisting everyone around him into enemies, obstacles, food. This wasn't how it was last time, he blearily realized as he heard himself snarl. He'd kept his head because Caroline had been talking to him, begging him to stay with her. But here in the dream, the agony was so all-consuming that he couldn't hear her at all, and as he looked around, still wracked with pain despite having completed the transition, all he saw were blurry red shapes, surrounding him, snarling at him, taunting him. Where was the white dress, the blonde hair? He whipped his head from side to side, trying to find her in the sea of foes that had materialized while he changed from man to wolf._

_A shape came at him and rage boiled up in his gut, setting him on fire and blurring his thoughts even more than they already were. With a snarl he lunged, his teeth ripping into the figure as he tore it limb from limb with his claws. The rest of the figures converged on him, attacking him with fists and teeth and blades and stakes, and he tore through them like so much meat, all the while trying futilely to transition back to his upright shape so that he could think clearly, could find Caroline in the crowd. His bones snapped under their own weight again and again, and he tried to roar, but it came out as a pathetic scream. Then his jaws locked around another body, and he crunched down, feeling their bones shatter against his teeth. It was an empowering feeling. It took his mind off his own brittle bones as they cracked and healed, cracked and healed. He lunged again._

_Then finally, he stared around him at the piled of dead figures on the ground. He blinked away the red at last, and started to recognize bits—a hand here, a ribcage there, a familiar shoe, a mop of blood-crusted ginger hair… was that mayor Lockwood's mangled head, he wondered? He nudged it with his foot so he could see what was left of the face. It was indeed mayor Lockwood's head. Pity. She'd been most professional when a bunch of Original vampires took up housing in her town. But she really shouldn't have crossed him when he was in his wolf form—hardly a wise move._

_As he began to wander around the room full of mangled corpses, he recognized more and more of them. Bits of Damon were scattered all over Elena, whose chest he'd torn in half. Matt Donovan's legs lay crossed over one another below his torso, like some perverse form of Jolly Roger. Dozens of familiar corpses littered the carpeted floor. He felt a pang of regret when he came upon Stefan, whose skin was red and stained not from blood, but from the amount of venom in his veins. Then came Rebekah, and his heart jumped into his mouth before he reminded himself forcefully that she'd recover in a few hours._

_And then a thin, pale hand grasped his ankle._

" _Why?" Caroline sobbed in a tiny, broken voice, which deteriorated into a hacking cough as she tried to use her perforated lungs._

_Klaus knelt—well, his knees folded without his permission and he fell to the floor beside her—and desperately cradled her in one shaking arm while he shoved up his sleeve (miraculously still intact) with his teeth and bit deeply into his wrist. He watched in horror—his body moving in agonizingly slow motion—as his venom sped through her veins, her body soaking it up like a paper towel commercial._

_By the time the first syrupy-thick drop of his blood found her lips, she wasn't moving, grey desiccated skin replacing her normally ivory hue._

" _No…" he tried to scream, but his voice came out a strained, muffled whisper. "No…_

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" He shrieked, bolting out of bed and dashing across the mansion in an instant, his feet carrying him to his art studio and out onto the balcony where he leaned against the railing, gulping down huge lungfuls of night air. He could still feel her, dying in his arms. His claws elongated without his conscious decision, painfully stabbing their way out from beneath his fingernails. He wrenched the railing in half faster than the human eye could follow, flinging one half off into the yard and crushing the other to the base of the balcony where it lay looking like a giant, malformed spider.

He was shuddering uncontrollably, and he clamped his hands down on his biceps, immediately regretting his decision to destroy the only thing close enough to grab and hang onto for some semblance of support.

His pulse was thundering in his veins as he futilely tried to force his claws back into his fingers—he just wound up stabbing himself over and over as they refused to retract in reaction to his triggered fight-or-flight instincts. He swore quietly, trying desperately to get his breathing under control. He was Klaus Bloody Mikaelson—he wasn't about to let some figment of his unconscious imagination affect him like this.

But the sad truth was, it could have been true. If he hadn't recognized Caroline, if Silas had been a bit cleverer, if anything had happened differently over the many different times in the last few years that Caroline's life had been at risk, then she easily could have died. One slip up on his part, and he might not have her here today.

He inhaled deeply, blowing the breath slowly out through his mouth. The need to go straight to her room and pull her into his arms, hear her heart beat and smell her familiar scent, was almost stronger than his need for oxygen, but his claws were still out, and in this state he had no idea what he might do.

It was terrifying to think that there were times when the thing that was most out of control in his life was himself.

"Klaus?" he heard her call softly as she padded down the hallway towards him. He was hardly surprised; he hadn't exactly been quiet.

The claws retracting felt like each of his fingertips was being deeply stabbed by a blunt object, and his fingernails felt loose and unnatural afterwards, but he got them back to human normalcy by the time she crossed the threshold.

He turned quickly to face her, mind whirling as he tried to think of something—anything—to say to save face, but nothing came. She had one of his hoodies on again, over the little shorts and shirt she usually slept in. Her eyes were bleary with sleep; most likely she'd woken suddenly when he screamed.

"What happened?" she asked, not pausing at the doorway, but shuffling towards him, and he ws so confused by the desire to reach out and grab her and the terror that somehow he'd break her that he froze, stock-still, every muscle in his body locking until she was so close he could feel her body heat, and she put a hand on his arm, exposed to the warm summer night by the short sleeves of his tee-shirt.

"A dream," he murmured, finding his voice and relieved to hear how steady it sounded. "Just a dream. Quite all right—go back to sleep." But his arms had a mind of their own, and he had drawn Caroline to his chest and buried his face in the hollow of her neck before he even finished speaking. His mind was roaring at her to run, that there was danger in this room and he was it, but he didn't have it in him to push her away; he needed too badly to feel that she was alive.

"Must've been some dream," she murmured, her arms wrapping around him in turn.

He knew his eyes were tinged yellow without having to look in a mirror. His werewolf side was typically what came to the surface when he felt protective, but right now, that frightened him more than anything, considering the content of his dream. He swallowed hard.

He'd promised himself that he would always keep her safe. He'd promised her mother that, too, as she'd warned him from beyond the grave not to harm her daughter. But the one danger he seemed incapable of keeping from her was the threat he himself posed. He sighed slowly, trying to relax before he really did do something unintentionally violent. The least safe place for her right at that moment was there clutched in his arms.

He'd wanted more and more power, and hadn't ever had to worry about harming those he cared about because, up until recently, that list had been a short one populated by those who wouldn't die from anything he did to them even if he did attack them in a fit of blind rage. But now his released werewolf side frightened him; he had it, but he didn't know how to use it, not really. One slip-up and he could so easily lose her. Fear batted against the inside of his stomach like a thousand butterflies ramming heedlessly into his body, trying futilely to escape.

He had two realistic options, he calculated as he stumbled out some excuse—he didn't know what exactly.

One: He could distance her from the problem and keep her safe that way.

Two: He could learn to control his wolf side so that it wouldn't be a problem.

As he continued to cling to her, he had to admit to himself that option one wasn't really on the table. He knew, deep down, that no matter what, he'd always come back to her eventually. Even if it wasn't in either of their best interests. He'd proved that to himself multiple times over, at great cost.

So, that left option two. He was going to have to learn how to control the beast within himself before it controlled him.

And, he realized, stomach plummeting to his bare feet, he only knew one surefire way of doing that, short of having the whole thing sealed up again—a process he did _not_ relish repeating for any reason.

This was going to be extremely unpleasant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ongoing TW for the next couple of chapters: when werewolves turn, it hurts like a bitch and they break bones. I think this falls under the header of canon-typical violence, but we don't usually get to see things from the werewolf's perspective. Ye be warned.


	4. Sweaty Summer Days

**Day 1**

During Klaus's incredibly long life, he had often found himself caught right in the sweet spot between "I have made a horrible decision" and "I'm going to finish what I started—I'm not about to admit defeat." Sometimes it was a morning after feeling, sometimes a sickening pit in his stomach as a battle started, and once it was even halfway into a drinking game where he realized that even though his liver would eventually heal itself, he was still going to have to suffer through the process.

But today, that feeling accompanied his third excruciating, ungainly transformation from man to wolf.

When he'd designed his house, he'd had some rooms prepared in the basement to use as a dungeon—vampire-proof, werewolf-proof, witch-proof, sound-proof, everything-he-knew-of-proof. Instead of keys, which he knew could be easily stolen, he'd had the doors spelled to only open for his hand print; it was elegant, break-out-proof, nicely advanced, and prevented anyone from successfully locking him up in his own cells—an issue he'd noticed the Salvatore brothers dealing with entirely too often.

That also meant that in wolf form, he couldn't possibly escape. No nasty chains to tangle himself up in, no need for a chaperone to ensure he didn't accidentally run around the town square—he could just walk in, strip down, close the door and go, and he wouldn't be able to leave until at least his top half was human.

Caroline had left the house early that morning to meet up with Doctor Kieran and his team, and Klaus had eaten a light breakfast, instructed the staff not to come into the basement no matter what they might hear, and then gone down and locked himself in for what he knew was going to be the first long, painful day in a string of long, painful days. But if he wanted to learn to control the power he'd worked so hard to acquire, then this was the way to do it. He didn't have a sire bond to break, but the point of the process was to turn without pain.

And he knew that if he wanted to keep Caroline close to him, he _had_ to know that he would _always_ be in control when she was near.

However, after four hours and two and a half turns, he found himself laying on the floor, halfway between forms, seriously reconsidering this plan. There had to be some spell. William Bloody Forbes couldn't have been the only person to ever come up with a way to do this—werewolves had existed for centuries! But hybrids hadn't, he admitted grudgingly to himself. That meant any magic having to do with them was relatively new, and the trouble with new magic was that it was untested. So the only _sure fire_ method of controlling his werewolf side was to go through this long, excruciating nightmare.

'If a bakers' dozen puppies can do it,' he told himself firmly, 'you can do it.'

Then his spine convulsed and shattered again, and he screamed in agony.

-0-

By 10am, the late June sun had thoroughly baked the town square, heating up the bricks that composed the decorative street so that they radiated back upwards, and soaking Caroline with sweat. While her daylight ring protected her from burning, it did nothing to keep the sweltering oven from affecting her cold-shifted vampire body. She desperately wanted to take shelter inside the cool, air-conditioned darkness of The Grill, but she wasn't about to admit defeat in front of Kieran, who had made no secret of the fact that he found her presence unnecessary.

In spite of the overwhelming heat, however, she had managed to prove her management skills as she directed the construction crew and networked with the council—all of whom preferred to work remotely from the shade and comfort of their own houses. In return for her efforts, Kieran was becoming slightly less hostile, and Sean was appropriately appreciative.

Klaus wasn't answering his text messages, but she assumed he was probably up to his elbows in paint. One of the things that she'd noticed while living with him was that when he was doing art, sometimes he'd forget the rest of the world existed for hours on end. It was… kind of cute, she had to admit to herself. Those were the only times anyone could ever sneak up on him. Sometimes she'd stand in the doorway of his studio watching him wielding his brushes—or colorfully cursing at them when he couldn't get something to look the way he wanted—and often he would never realize she was there if she didn't make a noise. Later on he'd ask if there was something she'd wanted, because when he'd leave the studio he'd smell that she'd been there, but during the process, all of his sense were focused on the act of creation.

After the first few times this happened, she realized what a big deal it was that he'd let her move in with him; if that was how he normally was with painting, then he had to be certain that his studio, his home, was a place where he could feel at least 99% safe.

Of course, she wasn't that much of a threat in the grand scheme of things, she had to admit, and he hadn't told her where he'd hidden the White Oak stake. She hadn't asked, either. She saw no reason for anyone to have a magical weapon of mass destruction, but if it had to exist, someone who, for all his imbalance, was strong, paranoid and would never in a million years want to actually kill his siblings was probably the safest person to hide it. She vaguely remembered when they'd first made the stakes. Although she hadn't known at the time that they would mean the deaths of thousands, she'd felt strange just holding the wood. It had felt… almost alive. Like it had a little thrumming pulse. She'd chalked it up to psyching herself out about magical kill-an-original wood, or maybe a sentimental attachment to Old Wickery Bridge, where she'd loved to hang out as a young child, before mosquitoes and sunburns really bothered her. It was scary to think that the plain construct of wood and iron that she'd known all her life had destroyed Elena's family and had the potential to destroy her entire species…

"Caroline," Sean said for the third time, looking a little concerned.

"Y-yeah, sorry, spaced out," Caroline exclaimed. "I'll have the council office email those records to you directly.

'Heat exhaustion, or ADD?' she wondered as she pulled out her phone—still with no messages from Klaus—and dialed Mayor Lockwood's secretary.

-0-

"This was _not_ this hard this first time," Klaus complained to himself as he lay prone on the concrete floor, panting, dripping sweat and probably blood in some places from where his bones had broken the skin. "How long did they bloody well have to do this before they got results?"

That was a pretty horrible train of thought. It still ached to think about the lengths that his hybrids had gone to in order to free themselves from him. Going through the same process himself—albeit with a better reason—just drove home how much they'd hated him. Channeling his rage, he extended his fingers, claws ripping out from under his fingernails, elbows shattering to become foreleg joints.

-0-

"Good day today," Sean commended Caroline as she packed up her laptop and files. They'd discovered, using concrete x-rays and other machinery, that the alley behind the Gilbert Building probably had some kind of dwelling underneath it. The body they'd discovered beneath the foundation itself was a child, about 10 to 12 years old, probably male, and Dr. Kieran hypothesized that it was probably a family burial—a child belonging to that household had died. Caroline felt pretty sick, thinking about that—remembering when Jeremy's death had sent Elena off the edge. They were carefully extracting the skeleton—they needed to know what tribe or group he was from so they could then contact that tribe or group and ask where he could be reburied.

"Yeah," Caroline laughed breathily. "Digging up kids and finding old buildings in 98-degree heat—so great, right?"

"Eh, it's pretty exciting stuff, from my point of view," he responded. "Based on some of the preliminary data, this could be early Europeans. Wouldn't that be incredible—an early European settlement right under your feet this whole time! Imagine if they turn out to be Vikings!"

Caroline tried really, really hard not to choke on her laughter.

"Wow—imagine that!" she said in what she thought was a passable imitation of 'wowed and impressed.'

"Hey, there have been historical rumors about them settling near here, but never anything concrete. It's gonna be an interesting summer!"

-0-

When Caroline returned to the mansion, Klaus was sprawled on one of his sofas, arm hanging off, the backs of his long fingers trailing against the ground, a half-empty water bottle nearby, clearly forgotten. Caroline closed the door quietly behind her, slipping out of her shoes on the matt. She frowned, tasting the air. Napping in the middle of the house instead of in his own bed wasn't like him at all—neither was showering in the middle of the day, rather than first thing in the morning or last thing at night, but she smelled his shower gel.

She crept into the kitchen, getting herself a tall glass of blood and an identical glass of water, double-fisting them to combat dehydration and vampiric thirst as quickly as possible. After gulping down half the blood and all the water, she headed for the stairs, but stopped when she realized that Klaus was half sitting, staring blearily at her as he came awake.

"Wha' time is it, Love?" he asked, voice slurred from sleep.

"Seven," she responded. "Rough day?" she turned her steps to sit beside him on the couch as he sat up with some effort and rubbed his face tiredly.

"Boring," he groaned. "Unbearably tedious. Yours?" Caroline raised an eyebrow.

"Hot," she responded dryly. "We made the fantastic and _totally unexpected_ discovery that there _might've_ been a Viking settlement near here a long time ago." He looked at her, then they both snorted with laughter.

"Really?" he said with a grin once he got ahold of himself. "Sounds like a monumental occasion. Shall I break out the champagne?"

"It's so strange," Caroline sighed, turning to face him and draping an elbow over the back of the sofa so her whole body was reclining sideways against the cushions. She rested her cheek comfortably against her arm. "It seems like such a _big deal_ —having archaeologists come discover layers of history in the ground beneath our feet—then coming home and there's actual, living history passed out in the living room like no big deal."

"Perhaps you should appreciate me more," he said with a laugh, and then suddenly his eyes softened, and his lips stretched into the smile that always made him look half like the devil, half like a giddy child. His eyes were sparkling as he looked at her.

"What?" she asked warily, not sure if this was going to be deep or just really, really dirty.

"You said coming 'home,'" he responded with a little shrug. "You've never said it before." Caroline was speechless for a moment, trying to remember having said it aloud before, and realizing that she never had.

"In any case," he added, saving her from the awkwardness of coming up with a response to that, "you should probably appreciate me more. I am, in fact, a living, breathing, _undead_ historical figure."

"I live with a fossil," she quipped back with a smirk. "How dazzling." He mock glared. "You do realize I'm cheating off of you with every college history… _everything_ , right?"

"That's not cheating," he responded indignantly, "that's using original sources! I'm an original so—oh, damn it," he cursed, realizing the egregious pun he'd just walked into. "Primary sources. We're calling me the primary source."

"Original hybrid… source," Caroline mouthed, trying it out as he mock glared again.

"Primary," he growled, and she shook her head impishly.

"You're not getting out of that one so easily," she warned him. He rolled his eyes heavenward, shook his head, and then stood up, planting his hands on his knees for support. Caroline's eyes narrowed.

"Did you turn today?" she asked. "You look really under the weather."

"Like I said," he responded flippantly, "bored."

"Breaking every bone in your body, sprouting fur, four legs and a tail just to amuse yourself—that's some pretty high-level boredom," she mused, still looking a little concerned.

"Relax, Love," he assured her. "I'm perfectly fine. Just stiff. I am an Original, you remember."

"Original… source," she responded, cracking a grin and standing up as well.

"Oh, shut it," he hissed.

"Never," she murmured in his ear as she passed him, headed for the dining room where she could smell Alphonse laying out dinner.

**Day 2**

Klaus had been torn apart before; occupational hazard that came with being an immortal with a violent temper and a long list of enemies. He knew what his own insides looked like, and it had stopped making him sick centuries ago. But today, his stomach was really disagreeing with this plan. The feeling of bits of his bones grinding against one another was so much worse than yesterday. He knew what it was—every time a bone breaks, it grows back stronger. That was one of the reasons that older vampires were stronger and more durable; it was a natural consequence of living a vampire's lifestyle. That also meant that with each successive turn, the process got more difficult, more painful.

He roared in agony, letting each of his vertebrae shatter in turn, re-forming into a wolf's spine—which didn't like being attached to a human's ribcage. Not at all.

-0-

"Dr. Kieran is working on a research design now," Caroline concluded, turning off her power point, "but based on preliminary research, they'll be here at least twelve weeks. We won't be able to continue construction until autumn."

"Make sure they prioritize removing the body and artifacts from the Gilbert property," Mr. Hopkins instructed with a sigh. It was no secret that he would have preferred not to get archaeologists involved at all. "That way we can finish renovations while they investigate the alleyway behind."

"But of course, in keeping with our town's vision," Mayor Lockwood emphasized, "we will be happy to cooperate with the researchers in any way possible."

'Then maybe you should put on old clothes and come hold sifters in the middle of summer,' Caroline thought dryly, soaking up the A/C while she could get it—she was headed to the dig after the meeting finished.

"Absolutely, Mayor Lockwood," Caroline responded professionally, closing her laptop. Mrs. Lockwood looked down her nose at her son's ex-girlfriend, then swept out of the room without saying anything. Carol knew that Caroline's intervention had likely saved Tyler's life, but she wasn't exactly thrilled about her shacking up with the guy who had tried to kill him. Caroline was used to this sort of attitude from people, though—parents of cheerleaders she'd beat out for captain, parents of girls whose boyfriends liked her better… She had a lot of practice not letting it bother her.

What did bother her, however, was wondering what Klaus was up to. Once again, he wasn't responding to her texts—and he'd been awfully unsteady the previous night for having voluntarily turned and spent the day running around with paws for a laugh…

-0-

When the dig finished up for the day—meaning when the sun was too low in the sky to safely continue—Caroline washed her hands quickly then had to remind herself to jog at human speed until she was out of visual range. (She hadn't been driving to the dig site because parking downtown was pretty limited and she wanted to leave the spaces for the researchers.)

She arrived home moments after she got out of other people's line of sight, and took her shoes off upon entering, like she had last night. But Klaus was awake this time, lounging in an armchair in front of the TV, drink in one hand, flipping listlessly through channels with the other.

"How was your day?" he asked. He smelled like shower gel again, she realized as she approached and sat on the couch nearest him.

"It was okay," she said with a shrug. "They're working on digging up the body, and starting excavations on the dwelling. Lots of sifting through dirt. Yours? Were you a wolf again?" she guessed, noticing some persistent redness on his skin, and exhaustion to his posture. A voluntary turn shouldn't be hurting him so much, should it? Then she realized she had been comparing him to Tyler—she kept forgetting that he lacked the experience to really do a smooth turn.

"Yeah," he shrugged, and she could tell he was playing it off. She frowned, but Alphonse announced dinner before she could ask, and Klaus quickly changed the subject. After they ate, he suggested they watch a movie, so she stuck in Iron Man and curled up against him on the couch—gently, still feeling like he was probably injured.

"' _I'd be prepared to lose a few with you_ ,'" Downey said with all of his Tony Stark swagger—or Stark said with all of his Robert Downey Junior swagger, she could never decide—and as the scene cut to a sex montage, she felt Klaus's arm wrap a little more securely around her. She looked up, and he was glancing sidelong down at her, smirking, eyebrow raised.

'Oh my god, we're alone, with no possible interruptions—for once,' Caroline realized. Her pulse thundered in her neck, and her hands started to sweat. For weeks, they'd been practically acting like roommates—loving caresses and occasional attempts at sexuality hadn't yet blossomed into anything. Klaus was giving her space, she knew—space to grieve her mother, space to get well over the disaster with Tyler, space to make her own decisions, regardless of what it cost him.

In an instant, the whole world seemed to fade and dim, and all she could think about was him—his arm around her, long fingers gently curved around her shoulder. In that moment, everything holding her back, everything distracting her melted away. Almost of its own accord, her hand hit a button on the remote—pausing or muting or stopping the movie; she didn't know, but the background of sound and moving lights cut off abruptly, so it worked. Klaus looked down at her again, question in his eyes.

She leaned up to kiss him, and he responded immediately, his tongue flitting between her lips as his arm lowered to her waist, pulling her onto his lap. She straddled him, leaning into him and moving her lips to his neck, sucking and nipping at the moles that decorated his throat. His hands began to explore her body, fingers caressing her legs, exposed by the tiny pajama shorts she'd changed into after dinner. His hands were rough and calloused, with unexpected strength, and a burning heat—his touch trailed fire across her skin, but it was the good kind of fire, like sunlight and bourbon and passion.

Heat was blossoming through her, different than the stifling heat of the outdoors—better, wilder, sweeter. When his fingers went under her shirt, she pulled away long enough to pull it off, discarding it on the arm of the couch before returning her lips to his skin. In an instant, he swept her up only to lay her down and get on top of her where he could more easily trail his lips down her neck, collar bones, chest…

That was when his ribs decided to spasm.

He barely avoided biting down on Caroline as the pain erupted through his whole torso, but he was vaguely aware that his unexpected claws had shredded right through a cushion beneath her.

"Klaus!" he heard her exclaim, struggling out from under him so she could pull him upright, get the pressure off his ribcage.

"Bloody hell," he hissed as the stress fractures healed. Of all the times for his nightmare to become reality, this had to be the worst—certainly worse than he'd imagined.

"What the hell just happened?" Caroline demanded, still supporting most of his weight. He sat up, quickly getting off of her.

"Nothing—it's fine," he gasped out; a knee-jerk reaction. 'What the hell?' he wondered in confusion. He had finished turning over an hour ago, showered, done some stretches, and should be perfectly fine, if stiff and tired. Then again, he'd turned a dozen times in two days—that couldn't exactly be healthy.

"Don't insult my intelligence," Caroline snapped, bringing him back to the present. "What's wrong?"

"Aftershocks," he responded with a shrug—but that hurt too—why was this happening? He should've recovered by now; he was an Original for god's sake…

"How many _times_ did you turn?" she exclaimed, drawing back a little now that he was sitting up on his own, but her hand remained on his shoulder, like she was still trying to offer some physical comfort.

"A few," he said off-handedly. "As we noticed on prom night, I'm not exactly skilled at controlling my form. This is, after all, a power I worked for centuries to attain," he reminded her, trying to play it off as nothing more than a little practice. He knew that if he told her what he was really doing, she'd probably just worry more. Besides, he hadn't even liked admitting to _himself_ that he had to go through the same training as those upstart puppies—he certainly didn't want to admit it to her if he could help it…

"Right," she murmured, unconvinced, but not pressing the issue quite yet. "Are you… going to be okay?"

"Of course," he scoffed, trying to hide the way his back was starting to twist again. "But," he added regretfully, "we might need to… postpone our more strenuous activities for the moment."

He kept up a casual front, but inside he was drowning in shame. Of all the moments that this sort of thing could have interrupted— _this_? After they'd already waited _so long_? But as Caroline nodded, put her shirt back on, and they settled back in for the movie—which neither of them really saw, after that—he was at least a little comforted by the fact that he knew he could be confident in her; when he finished this ordeal and was back to being his proper self, he was certain that she'd still be there.

It wasn't much consolation, but it was something.

-0-

_Elena's lungs burned, her weak fists pounding uselessly against the slick metal in front of her. Terror constricted her chest, and water filled it. It burned inside her lungs… was water supposed to burn? That couldn't be right, she thought with a sort of sick horror as darkness claimed her and she succumbed to drowning…_

Elena's sudden waking was silent—she grew stiff and her eyes flew open, her lungs frozen, not letting her gasp. She exhaled what little stale air she had, and then made a concentrated effort to relax into the planes of Damon's chest as he held her close to him in his sleep. She snuggled into him, trying not to think too hard about the dream.

The thing was… it hadn't been her, in the dream, drowning. Well, it was—it was from her perspective, after all—but she hadn't been herself.

She'd been Stefan.

Why was she dreaming about Stefan drowning?

It was probably a metaphor for something unpleasant in her subconscious, she told herself morosely, and settled in to get back to sleep.

-0-

Prague was the third stop on Rebekah and Matt's "Celebrate Matt's New Immortality Round the World Trip," but so far, it was Matt's favorite. Paris had been beautiful but too touristy, the Alps were fantastic for skiing but awfully quiet, but Prague… Prague was just sensually rich. The architecture was lovely and full of history, the food was utterly fantastic, and the company…

One of the best things about being a vampire, Matt thought, was that his senses could really take in everything around him. He'd always known Rebekah was fantastically beautiful, but now she took his breath away. He could take in and remember all sorts of tiny details—the shape of her lips, the way she showed her teeth when she smiled, the little pheromones wafting from her skin when she moved.

He appreciated Rebekah everywhere they'd been, of course, but here, here in Prague, she'd really seemed to come alive. In Paris she'd had to wear a hat and sunglasses most of the time, because too many older vampires lived in the city and might have recognized her, and in Switzerland they'd been in the mountains and she'd had to bundle up to keep up appearances. But here in Prague, she'd opted for a little black dress that barely deserved the title, and had her feathery blonde hair loose around her shoulders.

Even though the sight of her was—as usual—visually arousing, when he could really see her body, he was always struck by how strong she looked. Not in a bulked-up muscle kind of way, but lean and perfectly built—like she'd been designed by an expert. That was one trait that he'd learned was quite the aphrodisiac to most vampires, and he was no exception. He sat at the bar, rubbing his still unfamiliar daylight ring between his fingers as she made conversation in fluent Czech with a couple of other people, trying _not_ to look to any observant bystanders like she was compelling them dinner.

"So," a heavily accented voice greeted him, and he turned to see an olive-skinned brunette woman sitting at his other side. "New in town?"

"How can you tell?" Matt laughed a little awkwardly, taking a long draught of his third beer.

"I know all the vampires around here," she responded in a low voice, smiling disarmingly and winking at him. He felt Rebekah tune into the conversation.

"I'm Nadia," the vampire introduced herself cordially.

"Matt," Matt responded, holding out his hand to shake.

"Rebekah," Rebekah added, leaning around him. Nadia's dimples deepened when she took Rebekah's hand.

"Nice to meet you, Rebekah," she murmured.

"I don't suppose you know of anywhere nearby with a good honeymoon suite," Rebekah asked a little passive-aggressively. Matt had to work hard to restrain his laughter. She was exactly as possessive over him as she had been when he was human.

"I know of a lovely little place for a party of three, if you're interested," Nadia responded, arching an eyebrow and smirking, clearly mentally undressing both of them.

Rebekah's eyebrows went up, but her eyes gleamed with interest. Matt could feel his face getting hot. What was this—candid camera porn? But his enhanced vampire brain told him within a second that both were completely serious.

"New experiences," Rebekah mouthed at him with a smirk as Nadia got up and sauntered away towards the front entrance.

"Tell me about it," he laughed, downing his beer before following her out.


	5. I Know What You're Doing This Summer

**Day 3**

It was with a strong sense of irritation that Klaus realized he couldn't blame his lack of sex with Caroline this last time on Elena Gilbert. He lay in wolf form on the basement floor, panting in pain and exhaustion, trying to gather himself for the transformation back. No, Elena was off with Damon—her little doppelganger hands were completely clean in this one.

Wait, doppelganger, he realized with an exhausted bark that was probably supposed to be a laugh. With the state his body was in, even he wasn't entirely sure. The doppelganger's blood broke the moon curse, allowing him to transform in the first place.

The amusement was short-lived as the little bones in his tail started to convulse and disintegrate. That was easily the hardest limb for him to deal with, as he literally had to grow it and then destroy it entirely in each transformation, and he was so unused to having one that he had no idea how best to position it for this sort of thing.

When he got done with this, the first thing he was going to do was make love to Caroline Forbes.

The second thing he was going to do was kill the very first brunette teenager he saw.

-0-

"Sorry guys," Caroline called as she packed up and left the dig site. She'd explained, after trying and failing to focus on what she was doing for half the day, that she really needed to go home and make some phone calls. There were a lot of committees she was in the process of rotating off, and she had to nail things down with her replacements.

It wasn't a lie, exactly—but the truth was, she could have easily stepped into the Grill for a few minutes, made a couple of calls and come back. But after last night, she couldn't stop worrying about Klaus. What was he doing while she was gone? There was no way he was just turning once a day for funsies. She wouldn't put it past him to do that, of course, but he wouldn't be so wrecked afterwards if he was doing it on purpose. He'd dodged out of answering her last night, and today she aimed to get some truth.

So, since some Harvard student interns had arrived to help with the grunt work, she excused herself from her liaising duties, gave Sean her number, and headed home to see about her boyfriend.

When she slipped into the house, at first nothing seemed unusual. Monica and Heather were cleaning, and Klaus was nowhere to be found. She set her stuff down on the table by the entryway, and then after a few seconds of focusing, caught the unmistakable sound of bones breaking, and a wolf howling in pain. It was coming from beneath her feet—the basement that she'd never had occasion to explore.

"How long has he been doing that?" she asked Heather as the latter turned off the vacuum.

"Doing what?" Heather asked, frowning. Caroline had to remind herself that human ears probably couldn't pick that up. The sounds were so faint—most likely the basement was soundproofed.

"Locking himself in the basement all day," she guessed shrewdly.

"Oh, since the day before yesterday," the girl replied with a shrug. "He compelled us not to be concerned about anything we might hear, then went down and doesn't come out again until you're due home." She carried the vacuum into the next room and plugged it in.

Caroline sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. She knew that the girls in Klaus's employ had originally been victims of sex trafficking and horrible abuses, and that in spite of the blood drinking they were a hundred times safer and better taken care of here than they had been before. Still, it bothered her immensely when he'd issue orders like "don't think too hard about thus-and-so." Sure, she knew _why_ he did it—a human investigating noises like that wouldn't end well for anybody—but it still reminded her of when Damon was controlling most of her conscious mind.

Klaus screamed again, and this time it sounded a little more like him. She guessed that he was probably upset that every other hybrid on the face of the earth could seamlessly and painlessly shift forms, while he was still clumsy and hurt himself doing it. Perhaps he wanted to act like he'd been able to do it correctly the whole time, and that was why he was trying to train himself in secret. Although, she remembered three nights ago when she'd found him destroying the balcony of his studio, and he'd suddenly grabbed onto her and held her like a lifeline. Perhaps something else had shaken him, and this was a reaction to that? An agonized groan interrupted her musings, and she sighed and headed for the kitchen to brew up some of her special tea. Whatever his intent, he wasn't doing himself any favors trying to hide it.

Placing a saucepan on the stove, she started mixing the ingredients while calling Stefan on speaker to keep her hands free—hoping to distract herself until Klaus stopped breaking his bones in the background. However, Stefan wasn't answering, so she heard every sickening sound, with nothing to take her mind off it.

-0-

When Klaus finished for the day and trudged up the stairs, he smelled something so irresistible that his steps turned from the stairs to the kitchen without him consciously instructing them to go that direction. By the time he realized that what he was smelling was that healing tea, he'd come within sight of a blonde head turned away from him, bent towards the stove.

"'Just bored,' huh?" Caroline quipped, turning off the burner and pouring the mouthwatering contents into a mug. She turned to face him, eyebrow at a sharper angle than he'd ever seen it. He accepted the mug and took a long gulp before responding, reveling in the instant relief as it began to permeate his body. He hadn't expected her home so early—he was supposed to have at least another hour to shower, relax and pretend that he hadn't been literally torturing himself all day.

" _Well_ ," he started with an attempt at a sheepish-yet-roguish grin.

"Don't even start if you're just going to lie," she sighed, walking away from him to put the saucepan in the sink.

He growled deep in his throat, but his left leg started to spasm and he sat down on a barstool by the counter before he could stumble and look more undignified than he already was. He took another drink of the tea—realizing only then that it had been burning his mouth, because the relief had contrasted with the pain so much that he hadn't noticed the latter sensation.

"I've been meaning to practice," he finally said. "It's not like I just wanted to free my werewolf side so I could more conveniently bite people to death." He explained with an innocent shrug. "Since I finally had a surplus of free time, I figured I may as well get it done now, before the next challenger comes to town."

"'Practice,'" Caroline echoed with a nod. "So, by 'practice,' you mean 'learn how to do it in the first place,'" she clarified, hopping up on a bar stool with a glass of blood. Klaus glared at her, fuming a little.

"I think you're forgetting, Love, I'm an Original," he reminded her in a growl.

"I think you're forgetting, Klaus," she responded quietly, "I was herbal-remedy supplier for a dozen other hybrids doing exactly what you're doing right now. I'm not exactly ignorant about this stuff. What made you choose now?" she added before he could retort, genuinely curious and trying to diffuse the budding argument. "You've had loads of other opportunities."

"Well it's not exactly something one does with an audience," he responded as if it were obvious. "I had Stefan with me, then I was back here making peace with Mother, then Silas was trying to kill everybody, then you moved in." He shrugged, then winced, and went back to his tea. Caroline chose not to respond that actually everyone else _had_ done it with an audience—Hayley or Tyler, or both, had coached the rest of the pack through the process. That comment would just get another response of "I'm an Original, I don't need that kind of help."

"So you started three days ago," she clarified. He nodded behind the nearly empty mug. "You start when I leave in the morning and go until I'm on my way back at night?" Another nod answered her. "So from 7am to about 5pm," she finished. He gulped down the last of the tea and set the mug down.

"You're not doing yourself any favors there," she said bluntly. He frowned, still swallowing.

"Pretty sure consistency and self-discipline is the key to the process, Love," he replied.

"Oh, I agree," she said quickly, then paused, uncomfortable. "Actually," she added quietly, "you're screwing yourself over by resting for so long." His head tilted to one side, an invitation to elaborate on that. She hesitated, sympathy pains running through her body.

"I hate to be the one to say this," she finally explained, "but if you want to be able to turn without pain, three hours out of twenty-four is actually about all the rest you can get away with. See," she added quickly, despising the words coming out of her mouth and wishing the whole thing were over and done with, "every time your bones break, they heal a little stronger. So, by giving them so much time to heal, you're actually letting them harden so much more, which makes it that much harder the next day. From what I understand, and Hayley was more than willing to describe the process in _unnecessary detail_ ," she shuddered a little, "they were basically grabbing a couple hours of sleep, snacking, drinking that stuff," she nodded towards Klaus's empty mug, "and legit spending the entire rest of the time turning.

You think you're resting when you stop," she continued with a sigh, "but you've started a process that your body now has to decide whether or not to finish now that you're not trying anymore. So, if it decides to keep on going without you, you get last night." They both winced a little at the memory. "And if it decides to stop, then each day you start, you're basically starting over from the beginning.

It's not something you can really do on a part-time basis," she finished lamely, picking at her cuticle and looking anywhere but at him. Had she really just told the man she loved that torturing himself for ten hours a day wasn't good enough? It was _true_ though, she thought miserably. She knew how this worked. Her dad had come up with it, for goodness sake. After a long pause, she looked up at him, an apologetic expression on her face. He was looking away, but his face was pensive, evaluating what she'd said, not rejecting it.

"I see," he finally said. "That does explain a few things." It had been progressively worse in the mornings, but he'd assumed that was from fatigue, not from his body actually erasing his progress. He glanced up at her, and the pain in her face made his heart ache more than his body.

"Relax, Love," he exclaimed, putting his hand over hers, which had unconsciously clenched into a fist, and was trembling a little. "I knew this wasn't going to be a holiday in the South of France. Glad you brought it up before I wasted more of the summer." She bit her lip, and laced her fingers with his.

"Sucks that you have to do it at all," she murmured dejectedly.

"I know," he agreed with a dry laugh. "But, like any unpleasant growing experience, once it's over, it's over. This is hardly the first time I've had to experience pain to acquire power."

"I'd ask, but I'm wondering if maybe I don't want to know," she said, consternation twisting her face slightly. He leaned forward, kissing her softly for a moment before pulling away.

"Perhaps when you've a century more's experience with vampirism," he suggested lightly. She didn't look very comforted, so he leaned forward a little and wrapped her in his arms. Her head fit perfectly in the crook of his neck. "Besides," he carried on, "it's really not so bad—my body _is_ designed to do that, after all. I just lack practice." She snorted humorlessly and held him tighter.

"I had front row seats to Tyler's first few turns," she growled morosely. "I think I have a pretty accurate idea of how bad 'not so bad' is." She sighed. "Look, I know you're immortal and invincible and have had a crazy dangerous life for a thousand years, and I know you can handle it—don't get me wrong—but I just… I hate that you're in pain at all, Klaus," she finished quietly.

There was a long silence, and at first she thought maybe he was just moved by her concern or something, but when it stretched on uncomfortably, she pulled away to see his face.

"Klaus?" she asked in confusion as her eyes focused on the way his expression had twisted in rage. "Klaus, what's wrong?"

"Front row seats," he quoted in a monotone. "You were _there_?"

"Y-es?" she responded with a confused frown.

" _You were there_ _ **with**_ _him, a_ _ **brand new werewolf**_ _,_ _ **while**_ _he was turning into a werewolf?"_ Klaus snarled, clearly making an effort not to scream it in her face.

"Yes! What about it?" she demanded with even more confusion.

" _And he let you stay with him?_ His bite was a _death sentence_ to you, you hadn't even met me yet so you didn't have a cure, and he let you do something so _suicidally stupid_?"

"He chained himself up—calm down, Klaus, you're breaking the countertop!" Indeed, the marble had begun to crack under his hand. He just kept on squeezing. How dare that worthless mutt put _his Caroline_ in such needless danger? He thought perhaps Caroline was still talking, but he couldn't hear her past the rage thundering through him. His nails were elongating again, and ironically he was about to do the same damn thing for which he wanted to kill Tyler Lockwood by inches.

With a last glimmer of sanity, he released the countertop, sped past Caroline, and made it down into the dungeon, slamming the door behind him before the transformation got the best of him, his howl of rage coming out in a wolf's voice.

His claws gouged deep into the concrete that night before he was finally rendered unconscious from sheer exhaustion.

**Day… 1, Apparently**

By the time he heard Caroline up and moving the next morning, Klaus had been awake and turning for four hours. He'd passed out on the concrete floor, but the pain woke him and, remembering her advice, he'd gone with it, taking every opportunity to speed up this ordeal. It had been a long time since he'd had any reason to sleep on the ground, and he was unused to the aches and cramps and general filth; he was relieved he'd instructed his staff not to bother him for any reason. He'd have to kill anyone who saw him in such a mortifying state just on principle.

-0-

On the Other Side, Bonnie lounged against the rough concrete wall, eyes narrow, judging her old enemy, trying to decide if all of this made him 1% more worthy of her beloved Caroline.

It had been surreal to watch their budding romance as an unnoticed ghost. She'd known vaguely that it was happening while she was alive, of course, but she'd never really been in the room to see their interactions, not to mention her preoccupation with Jeremy's death and the Silas drama.

The playful banter, occasional arguments, every little thing that she'd grown accustomed to associating with relationships seemed at once disturbing and perfectly fitting when she saw it on them. It was perfect because of the obvious bond between them; the dynamic of 'die for you, live for you, kill for you' love. But it was disturbing because sometimes, when she'd watch them arguing over what kind of coffee to buy or settling in to watch a movie, she'd forget for a while that the man with his arm around her best friend was one of the greatest monsters who ever lived. In those moments, it was almost like he was just a man—like they were just a pair of humans getting used to living together.

She wondered how often Caroline forgot about that.

As Klaus's spine began to fragment, the wail of pain he released had to be the most heart-wrenching, pathetic cry Bonnie had ever heard.

"He deserves everything he's getting," she murmured, although of course there was no one there to hear her and nod in agreement.

Honestly, she was beginning to wonder if she even agreed with herself.

She clenched her fists, shook her head, and ghosted through the door, ascending into the rest of the house to look in on Caroline instead.

She probably just felt sorry for him like she would for any being in pain, like she would for a stranger, like she would for roadkill that wasn't quite dead yet.

That was all. It had to be.

-0-

Caroline showered as quickly as she could, and practically ran out of the house. She hadn't realized it the night before, but she would, of course, be able to hear everything Klaus was going through. It had taken her a little while to get over the shock of his sudden mood swing and figure out that his outburst the previous night had been because he was so concerned about her safety. To be honest, she had nearly forgotten about how dangerous that had been, considering that now having an angry werewolf around was almost routine, between Tyler's trips back into town last semester and her moving in with Klaus.

The day was both impossibly long and way too short. With each moment, she was horribly remembering what Klaus was going through, but then suddenly the work was over for the day, and she had to go home and hear the evidence of it for herself. She walked at human speed, dragging her feet, messing around on her phone, and generally stalling as much as she could.

She heard bones breaking before she even got up the driveway.

This was going to be a long, long few weeks.

With a resigned sigh, she stuffed her phone in her back pocket, let herself in, and headed to the kitchen to mix him up a dose of werewolf tea.

**Day 6**

Almost a week into the process, Klaus began to notice a minute change. He was still in horrible pain, certainly, but it had taken on a routine quality. Before, it was like his body was falling apart at the seams, shattering and twisting every which way as it fumbled from one form to the other. Now, it was a bit more orderly, like his subconscious had picked out the most efficient process and was starting to improve upon it.

Everything else was becoming a little more routine as well. He knew about how many hours he'd go before his body would just shut itself down for an hour or two, then wake him up again to keep going. All he had to do was follow the pattern. A few times a day—his perception of time was impressively skewed by the mixed up sleep schedule and constant pain—he'd smell something irresistible, get back to human form, and open the door to find a tray of food, a few blood bags, and a thermos of tea. Other than that, he didn't open the door, and certainly didn't emerge.

He wasn't getting within sniffing distance of Caroline until he had a handle on this.

**Day 10**

"Okay guys," Caroline finished, standing up and sliding her laptop back into her bag. "With that, I'm officially off the council. Jackie, you got this?" she checked.

Jackie Williams gave her a thumbs up, then stood as well.

"Let's hear it for Caroline and her three good years with the team," she exclaimed, and the Mystic Falls High School Student Council broke into a standing ovation.

"Thanks, guys," Caroline said with a warm smile.

As she walked home, she fiddled with the Zillow app on her phone, trying to make a decision about if and when to sell her house. She knew that she could just keep it—have her childhood home waiting in the wings if she ever needed it—but she wondered if maybe it was healthier to let go. In her free time over the last week, she'd been organizing the place and moving the last of her stuff out. Meredith had _finally_ cleared her for normal heavy lifting vampire activities, and really, she'd take any excuse not to be home when she wasn't actively brewing tea. The sound of someone she loved in pain never went away, never became background noise, and really, she'd never want it to; what would that mean about her if it did?

Sighing, she opened up an email to Bonnie—who had been oddly unresponsive so far, but then again, she was traveling around the world with her mom. Who knew what kind of cell signal she was getting in other countries?

[Hey, Bon,] she started. [How's pre-college travel going? Your official acceptance letter arrived today—so did mine and Elena's. Elena was so confused… I completely forgot to tell her I applied for her! She was excited though, once that got cleared up.

[I've been so busy finishing up everything from high school. I just officially rotated off my last committee; now my only non-college responsibility this summer is making sure the archaeologists and the town council get what they need from each other. Beyond that, I'm free.]

She paused, pondering the implications of that.

The first time she'd had werewolf venom in her system, the terrible thing she'd hallucinated was having her ties severed—her ties to her family, to her friends, to her home, to things she loved. Then Klaus had turned up, healed her, and she'd woken up the next morning still firmly attached to everything.

Now, though, it was actually happening in real life; her parents were dead, her friends were scattered across the world, she'd graduated high school, and was considering selling the house she'd already moved out of. But although she grieved the losses, this was nothing like the venom-induced nightmare. For every string she severed, there was a new one to take its place. She'd moved from her childhood home to live with the man she loved. She'd moved on from high school but was preparing for college. It was… actually pretty liberating. And the truth was, a lot of that perspective was because of Klaus. She was sad about the way she was beginning to lose her old life bit by bit, but she was excited and confident about the future, because she knew he was in it.

Unfortunately, she was pretty sure that wasn't the kind of thing she could really talk about with Bonnie—she needed to sit down with her in person and talk about what Klaus meant to her, in spite of everything he'd done, before she could really have conversations like that with her best friend.

[The dig's pretty boring, but some of the interns are really cool,] she continued, finishing off the message with trivia.

**Day 12**

Halfway through a turn, Klaus found himself mentally drafting a new painting, and that was how he knew something was different. He was distracted. The pain was starting to take a back seat—he could manage it while thinking about other things. He was actually able to feel… almost bored.

Although this gave him a surge of confidence, he knew he couldn't afford to take any chances. He did _not_ want to have to start this whole process over again if he messed it up.

He began to switch up the way he turned, making sure to train his whole body evenly.

-0-

"I know it's taking a long time, Marguerite," Kieran sighed in exasperation. "It's archaeology, not black magic. These things are delicate—they take a lot of time and patience."

Sean lay across his hotel bed, playing catch with himself with a pen he'd found on the nightstand. He knew that both his aunt and uncle were fighting losing battles—Marguerite would never calm down when she wanted something and didn't get it immediately, and Kieran would never risk compromising a dig just because _The Family_ had ulterior motives for funding his beloved research. He'd heard this conversation three times since they'd come to Mystic Falls, and was starting to be able to quite the various points of argument from memory.

'Next, she'll remind him that her project is what's funding her research,' he thought absentmindedly. 'Then he'll remind her that if he accidentally destroys what she's looking for by going too fast, then she'll never get it.'

"And what are you going to do if we go too fast and damage your artifact, Marguerite?" Kieran demanded, right on cue.

"Soooooo predictable," Sean muttered to himself under his breath, and headed off to take a shower.


	6. Baby Pictures

**Day 14**

"Oh, my god, I've missed you!" Elena squealed, hugging Caroline tightly. They actually hadn't seen each other in person in almost three weeks—that was basically a record, with them, and Caroline hugged back with enthusiasm. She'd had a day off, but hadn't particularly wanted to spend it at home—not with Klaus still breaking all his bones in the basement. So she'd quickly made plans with Elena, who was a little reluctant to leave her summer honeymoon with Damon, but eventually agreed.

She'd be engaged in her own summer sexcapades—if her boyfriend wasn't locked in the dungeon. She knew that he wouldn't let her into the room for anything—even though she felt pretty confident that she'd be safe, if she came in to try and help—so all she could do was make sure he got his herbs a few times a day, and wait for it to be over. She'd tried to get into his head last night, but that hadn't ended well…

_She waited until he fell silent and she knew he was asleep. Around 2am, she'd crept down the stairs and sat with her back to the door, letting her conscious mind fade out and explore the world around her, searching for dreams to enter. The initial wave of pain was sickening, and almost drove her back, but she pushed onward, trying to find him amid the sea of agony in his head. If she couldn't be with him in person, maybe she could support him in spirit._

_But the moment she found him, before the dream really solidified into a scene where they could see each other and talk, it was like he caught her entering mind and gently but firmly pushed her away. She awoke with a gasp, then growled deep in her throat, frustration crackling along her spine._

_She could hear his heartbeat—it sped up, and she knew he was awake too. She hadn't meant to shake him out of what little rest he had—her heart twisted. She heard him shuffling around, then claws clicking on concrete; he must have slept in wolf form. She heard him approach, could practically feel when he pressed a huge wolf paw against the door. They stayed like that for a long moment, and Caroline tried not to cry. Then she heard him back up, and a sickening grinding sound announced that he was back at it._

_She flitted up the stairs in a second, burying herself under the covers and holding her pillow over her ears._

"Have you heard from Bonnie lately?" Elena asked, stirring her shake lazily with a long spoon.

"No," Caroline responded, "I've been sending her emails, but she hasn't responded yet. Do you know if she's been talking to Jeremy?" She hadn't heard from Stefan either, and wasn't sure if it was too soon to be worried. He was a century and a half old, so his perception of time was a bit different, but he'd also lost the love of his eternal life to his brother. She knew at some point she'd have to take drastic action to track him down, but not yet. For now, she'd leave him be. She knew he wouldn't have talked to Elena, of course.

"He said she called him yesterday," Elena responded, "when she had signal, but I guess they weren't on long. She says hi to everybody."

"Is it so hard to send a group text?" Caroline wondered sourly, straw clamped between her teeth as she spoke, then took a long, slurping sip of her own shake.

"Well, she's bonding with her mom," Elena shrugged, finishing off her shake and pushing the glass aside to have better access to the big plate of cheese fries between them. "Speaking of bonding…" she smirked. "How have things been with Klaus?" Her voice hitched a little bit when she said his name, but otherwise, she sounded genuinely interested. She was definitely making an effort to accept them as a couple, and in spite of the horrible timing of the question, Caroline appreciated it.

"We're taking things slow," she responded. "After… everything," she paused, not willing to bring up her mom, "I've needed some space to recover. And he's been… amazing about that. Of course," she added brightening and laughing a little, "it's been a little weird moving in with him and having to agree on things like coffee and air fresheners—that part's not very 'fairytale.'" Elena snorted with laughter, cheese decorating her chin.

"I can't imagine him being so… ordinary," she admitted, cleaning her face with a napkin.

"It's kinda' cute, actually," Caroline responded. Her heart throbbed uncomfortably at the thought of what else was going on in their household at that very moment, but she shoved the sadness down, not wanting Elena to see. She was 100% certain that he wouldn't want anyone to know what was going on with him. Besides, she didn't really want to talk about it. She'd just keep on doing what she was doing, and go to be every night hoping that she'd wake up in the morning to the sound of brush strokes from the studio.

-0-

Klaus's stomach growled. He smelled food, and pushed his body into human form so he could open the door. The transformations were taking a lot out of him, so he'd instructed Alphonse to increase him to five meals a day. Even with that, he found he was burning through his calories faster and faster. Of course, the transformations were faster too—it only took him a minute or two to shift from one form to the other. It still hurt, but it was becoming more manageable as well.

He was close—so close to finishing this.

Gulping down the last of his food, he slid the tray back out, closed the door, and dropped back into wolf form.

**Day 17**

"There's something in here," Nora announced excitedly as she gently sifted through a keg of some kind, which was half full of dried corn.

"Something like corn, or something like _not_ corn?" Sean called from where he was using a toothbrush to gently dust a vague shape out of its resting place in the dirt.

"Would I announce it if it was corn?" the short-haired woman demanded irritably as her fellow interns turned towards her to see what she was making a hubbub about. Caroline set her laptop, with the progress report she'd been composing, aside so she could jog over and see if Nora had found anything interesting. In spite of the heat and the dust and the generally tedious nature of it all, she had to admit that she was starting to enjoy seeing what the archaeology team uncovered.

"Oh, my god, it feels like a book," Nora gasped as Kieran ran over and started to direct people to remove and bag up the corn so they could get at what was underneath.

"Who puts a book in a food barrel?" Jason quipped, frowning.

"To hide it, I guess," Sean suggested. "Hey, maybe it's ancient porn!"

Caroline snorted, but leaned forward with everyone else as the book was carefully extracted. She didn't know enough about ancient artifacts to tell if it was paper or parchment, but it was clearly bound with rough, heavy leather. Kieran handled it with painstaking care, supporting the binding as he gently let it fall open to whichever page was the most natural.

There was nothing written in it—instead, the two-page spread was covered in charcoal drawings of a tree. Caroline could tell it was the same tree—there was a drawing of the whole thing, but then certain parts were repeated, like the artist felt they needed more effort, but didn't want to risk spoiling the whole. Caroline whipped out her phone and snapped a picture, just before Kieran turned a block of pages. Once again, he let them fall open to wherever was the easiest, and the next page was covered in animals—there was a horse, a dog, a pair of squirrels, a few birds… she snapped another photo as Kieran let the book fall closed, bagging it up with the rest of the artifacts, and carefully placing it with the day's findings.

As the interns exclaimed in excitement at the interesting find, and Kieran instructed them all to get back to work, reminding them that they only had so much time to get what they could from this property, Caroline stood frozen, staring at the pictures on her phone.

A sketchbook. They'd found a sketchbook. The dry corn had preserved it, kept it away from air and damp.

They'd found a sketchbook. A rarity, if everyone's reactions were anything to go on. A rarity, _like Klaus had told her when describing his_. And that horse… the drawing style looked familiar.

Familiar enough to give her a frightening idea of what exactly they were excavating.

She spent the rest of the day in a shocked daze, weighting the implications of that.

"Hey everyone, let's take a picture," Sean called as they all packed up at the end of the day. "Commemorate today. Gather in, come on!" Setting down bags and equipment, everyone huddled together to get into the shot as he held up his phone to take a group selfie.

"Caroline, come on!" Nora called, beckoning her over.

"I'm not really—" Caroline started, but Sean cut her off.

"You're part of the team," Sean insisted. "You're local support—we couldn't do anything without you. C'mon—get in here." Caroline squeezed into the frame, made a passable imitation of a smile, and listened to the shutter sound repeat until Sean got a picture he liked. Once he released all of them, she blundered her way home, still in shock. And of course, she couldn't bring this up while Klaus was in the middle of all of his werewolf stuff…

**Day 20**

"Marguerite," Kieran greeted his cousin without preamble, sitting on the pieces of shattered asphalt that had been piled near the dig site after the construction crew had ripped it up from the alleyway.

"We found what you're looking for," he announced blandly, contemplating the item resting in his weathered palm.

**Day 21**

Klaus stood on one side of the cell, posture balanced, body relaxed. He inhaled deeply, took a step forward, then curled his body inward, rolling on his back to come up onto his feet.

But when he stood, he had paws.

It was painless—it was effortless—it was fantastic.

He was ready. And hungry.

He stretched his wolf body luxuriously. As he pushed his limbs outward, they elongated, shifting back to human, and a moment later he stood up a man again. He threw on the clothes that he'd given up on and discarded weeks ago, and jogged upstairs for a much needed shower and whatever food he could lay his claws on.

-0-

Caroline trudged through the front door, worn down and exhausted from another confusing day of sifting through dirt and wondering if they were really digging through the ruins of her boyfriend's original house. She didn't know _what_ to think of that.

She was so distracted that she didn't notice at first that something had changed. She dropped her purse on the table, slid out of her shoes, took three steps, and was immediately swept off her feet—literally.

"Wha—" she exclaimed, catching up and realizing that at some point, Klaus had appeared, picked her up, spun her around, and was now kissing her enthusiastically.

"You're… back," she said lamely when he pulled away and set her down. His skin practically glowed with health, and he had that devil-may-care grin back. The something-different had been the blissful silence, she realized.

"I feel _glorious_ ," he practically purred, and kissed her again. "I can turn as easy as breathing," he added, followed by another kiss, "and _I have missed you, Love_." She kissed him back, pressing herself against him, new energy surging through her as she realized that he was okay, that it was _over_ , that he was back by her side, seeming better than ever. Her fingers wove through his curls as she pulled him into her—he responded by hooking his hands under her legs and lifting her up so she was wrapped around his upper body, then whirling so she was halfway sitting on the entryway table.

That was when Caroline's stomach growled.

She'd been so stressed that she'd hardly eaten the last few days, and as relief flooded through her, her body decided to remind her of that little fact. She cringed a little, but she felt Klaus laughing against her. He pulled away, thumb tracing her lips.

"Put on something nice," he instructed. "We are going out—I've been in this house much too long."

"Okay," she agreed breathlessly as he lifted her down from the table and kissed her one more time before releasing her. She ran up the stairs, washed the dirt off her hands, and pulled on a blue spaghetti strap blouse and white dress pants, slipping her feet into plain, straw-colored sandals and appreciating for a moment that she'd had the foresight to paint her toenails in spite of spending a month in sneakers.

She returned to the living room within two minutes, combing through her hair with her fingers and pinning the front back by feel, a skill she'd perfected years ago. Klaus was waiting, and she noticed that he'd already dressed in a thin button-down with dark jeans. He looked amazing. He always looked amazing, she had to admit to herself, but after almost a month of not seeing him, knowing what awful condition he was in, she found the contrast fairly intense. He looked euphoric—and she felt giddy.

"Where are we going?" she asked as he handed her purse to her and she strung it over her shoulder.

"How do you feel about Italian?" he asked, placing a hand at the small of her back as they exited the front door and headed towards the garage.

As it turned out, when he said "Italian," he meant a restaurant about twenty minutes away called Obelisk,* which was one of the most expensive places around, located in DC, a mile and a half away from the White House. It was small, but had an impressive, cultured, rich-people atmosphere, and Caroline immediately felt underdressed. Klaus had apparently made a reservation before she even arrived home, and a table was prepared for them with the beginnings of the restaurant's famous five-course dinner.

"Celebrating?" she said with a smile as their waiter poured them each a glass of red wine.

"To the fullest," he agreed, raising his glass in toast. She lifted hers as well.

"So," he began after a long, slow sip of the wine, "what've you been up to for the last three weeks? I feel like I've been away."

"You _have_ been away," she laughed, a little sadly, still thinking about what he'd just gone through, but not really able to dwell on it—not with him here, large as life, beaming at her, not to mention the way he was starting to undress her with his eyes.

She was definitely hungry for something besides the food.

-0-

"We should go skiing," Katherine suggested as she floated luxuriously on her back in the clear water of the Bahamas.

"She says, four days after arriving in the tropics," Elijah murmured with equal parts laughter and longsuffering patience. Katherine kicked her legs to get upright and swam over to her lover.

"Making up for lost time, I guess," she said with a laugh and kissed him. "Besides, seeing you in swimming trunks is surreal," she added with a dimply smirk. "Anyway, you like Switzerland in the summer, don't you?"

"I do," he admitted, then frowned. "How do you know that?"

"I used to play this game with myself," she said, treading water but moving back a little. "I'd find out where you and Klaus were and see how close I could get. What's that old saying, 'the best place to hide something is in plain view?' None of you were looking for me when you were sitting down at a restaurant or lounging on a beach or in your top box at the opera—sometimes I was less than two yards away." She shrugged and smirked again.

"That sounds… remarkably inadvisable," Elijah responded weakly. She tossed her head, and ran a hand through her saturated hair.

"Worked, didn't it?" she quipped, and swam back into him to press another kiss to his lips. "What's past is past," she reminded him. "Suffice it to say I'm very skilled at hiding in plain sight. And I know you love Switzerland in the summer."

Elijah nodded agreement, wrapping an arm around Katherine's waist, and trying not to contemplate how he or his brother could so easily have been the death of her if she'd made one wrong step these last five hundred years.

-0-

By the time desert was placed in front of them, both Klaus and Caroline had each downed a few glasses of wine, Caroline had described some of the more interesting aspects of the dig, Klaus had managed to get on her last nerve by repeatedly shifting his hand silently into a paw and placing it on the table to see how long it would take her to notice (the record so far was eight and a half minutes, although he suspected that time that she'd deliberately avoided looking for it) and he'd also described some new art pieces he was thinking of starting on for summer projects.

It wasn't until Caroline swallowed her last mouthful of chocolate blackberry cake, and began to lick the crumbs off her fork that she remembered the sketchbook.

"Klaus," she started, swallowing the last of the cake and setting her fork down to grab her phone out of her purse, "remember how you were telling me that having a sketchbook was pretty rare, when you were growing up?" He nodded.

"Bound books were difficult to make and expensive to acquire," he responded, setting his wine glass down. "Elijah and Rebekah worked together saving up for over a year to get me one for my fifteenth birthday. Why?"

"Because a few days ago, we found this—" she slid her phone over to him, showing the first picture, "hidden in the bottom of a barrel of dried corn." Klaus picked up the phone to get a better look at the image, and froze, looking like he was seeing a ghost—which in a way, he was.

"I'll be damned," he murmured after a long pause.

"Are we digging up _your old house_?" she whispered.

"So it would seem," he responded, narrowing his eyes and moving his hands around like he was trying to plot landmarks, get perspective. Finally, he raised his eyebrows and nodded. "Yes, I suppose you are." There was another long silence.

"So," Caroline asked lightly, trying to break the tension, "why was your sketchbook in a food storage barrel?"

"We had to leave home in a hurry, for fear of Mikael's imminent return," he explained quietly. "I couldn't bear the thought of destroying it, but I knew that I would lose it if I carried it with me, and I didn't want him to have his hands on it, so I suppose as we got ready to run I shoved it in there. I don't really remember the details—I wasn't thinking too clearly at the time."

"I see," Caroline replied. The conversation had gotten heavy after all. She reached over to place a hand on top of his—and encountered fur.

"KLAUS!" she snapped. He snorted with laughter, a glint of mischief shining in his eyes.

"It's just my hand, love," he said with a smirk.

"No," she hissed, "right _now_ , it's a FOOT. And a FOOT has no business being on the table!" She gripped his paw to remove it from the table cloth, but it shifted into a hand under her skin, and he looked at her innocently.

"My god, you're a thousand-year-old child," she sighed, pressing her free hand to her face.

"Guilty as charged, Love," he agreed, taking a luxurious drink of wine with his own free hand, still squeezing hers with his other one. "What is the use of living forever if I have to be mature and serious all the time?"

-0-

That night, after they'd finished at the restaurant, the two vampires headed straight to the archaeological dig. It was deserted by then, of course, and both easily jumped over the hastily-erected anti-vandalism fences. By the light of cell phone flashlights, they made their way through the dig, Caroline with a sense of easy familiarity from being there most days that month, and Klaus with a hesitant nostalgia, slowly letting his light rove over the shapes that loomed out of the ground in the darkness.

"The westernmost wall would have been about… there," he said softly, pointing his light at a point beyond where they'd torn up the concrete. "Our room was over there—you're not close yet—and my parents' room is that way. You'll hit it in a couple of days, at this rate. This here was the main room…" he continued to muse, shining the light on the ground at his feet. "Kitchen and living area is basically what you're excavating at this point. You're standing in the front doorway," he added, looking at her. She'd hung back a little, wanting to give him space, and she shifted her feet uncomfortably. It was so strange to think that the "archaeological dig" was _Klaus's home_ —was the physical representation of his childhood. He flashed her a small smile and loped back over to her, scoring the ground near her left foot with the toe of his boot.

"See if you can get them to dig here next," he said with a laugh. "This is where we hung most of our blades. Mikael took his sword and his favorite hunting knife, but all we took were the knives—there should still be some real Viking swords, right there," he tapped the ground a little, and smiled at her again.

"And it's not… weird for you?" she asked hesitantly. He shook his head, scrunching his nose a little.

"Not the first time I've turned up in a historical study, Love," he responded. "Though I do prefer when its experts analyzing my art and trying to prove I'm this painter or that painter under a pen name, and failing every time." Then he sobered. "I'll need access to the artifacts they extract, though. Mother only had the one talisman that I know of, but we can't be too careful. Where are they sending the items they dig up?"

"They have a field office set up at the high school, since no one's there except the varsity sports and a few summer classes. For right now, everything is there to be photographed and catalogued before they send it all to Harvard for further study."

"I'll have Terry meet me there tomorrow night to go through what they have already," he shrugged.

"What about the body?" she asked as they headed back home. "They found the body of a kid—probably a 10-12 year old boy, near the house. They have the skeleton at Mystic Falls General, in the morgue. Do you think… it was someone you knew?"

She didn't see him come to an abrupt halt, and walked right into him.

"Sorry—Klaus?" she asked in confusion. He was still as stone. She scurried quickly around to face him—his shocked expression looked so incredibly _young_ … it was like the surprise had dropped the years from his face, and he was as young as that skeleton; a child in a man's body. "Klaus?" she said again, softly. With some apparent effort, he brought his eyes down to meet hers.

"Henrik," he whispered. "Those _insignificant humans_ have gone and desecrated my brother's grave."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Remember, I use Falls Church, VA as the map reference for Mystic Falls, because in the book it's Fells Church, VA. Obelisk is a real expensive Italian place located 1.5 miles from the White House—you can look it up.


	7. Buddha Says

"So, is he around here too?" Bonnie asked hesitantly, alternately watching Caroline's attempts to calm Klaus down and prevent him murdering anybody, and Freya's miserable face as she watched her brother's rage and pain. "Your little brother, I mean," she clarified when the little witch looked blearily up at her, clearly not paying much attention.

"No," Freya murmured. "He never manifested any powers. Neither did Elijah—they would've been normal, had they not been vampires. Finn, Rebekah and Kol would have come here anyway, as would Niklaus, because of his werewolf gene. But no, Henrik was completely and wholly human. He passed on immediately, found peace in the afterlife like he was supposed to."

Both ghosts turned their attention back to their living family. Klaus was pacing the living room of his mansion like a wild thing, phone clamped to his ear with one hand, gesturing with the other, while he heatedly monologue at whoever was on the other end. He was apparently claiming the body on behalf of some Norwegian historical society (that probably actually existed somewhere, for all Bonnie knew) while Caroline sat in an armchair waiting for him to get off so she could turn her attention back to keeping him from doing anything irreversible. How he managed to convince them, Bonnie had no idea, but eventually he hung up, looking slightly mollified.

"He's mellower about it than I expected," Bonnie said lightly as she watched Klaus sink into the sofa with a growl and run a hand roughly through his hair.

"He probably wouldn't be, if she wasn't around," Freya responded. "It's strange… it's not like he flipped a switch and suddenly he turned good or anything so magical. But he loves her enough that if he has to take further steps to make sure that she's safe—even from him—then he will."

"I wonder how long that double-standard can last," Bonnie muttered under her breath. Freya shot her a reproachful look, but said nothing. Really, there was nothing to say or do until whatever was going to happen, happened.

-0-

"I'll have him reburied here, on the grounds," Klaus said after a long silence. "Call Elijah and Rebekah back—have a memorial or something."

"Are you going to wake Kol up for it?" Caroline asked. Klaus shook his head stubbornly.

"A century, at least—I haven't changed my mind about that. If nothing else, he can sleep until his favorite musicians are all aging has-beens. Serves him bloody right, too."

Caroline absentmindedly rubbed her left hand with her right. It had—as Terry predicted—remained a few shades paler than the rest of her; not stark enough to be noticeable to the human eye, but to a vampire it stood out a bit. It still felt a little different, too—lighter, weaker—but not enough to really handicap her. Most days she forgot it had happened. Until something reminded her that her boyfriend's brother was asleep in the basement because she'd stuck a magical dagger in his heart. Ironically, after everything that had happened, she had to admit to herself that Kol was right; they really should have left Silas well alone. Of course, they'd handled it, in the end, but not before they'd all suffered so much—not before she'd lost…

"Bushmills," Klaus said tonelessly. Caroline looked up in confusion.

"It's Irish whiskey," he continued. "There's an Irish pub in Arlington—they had some excellent Bushmills last time I was there." Caroline just stared at him, not sure where he was going with this, as he stood up and offered her a hand.

"I feel like I'm going to murder someone," he said flatly. "Possibly everyone. And you look like you're about to cry. So, bar, alcohol, blood, and the hangover tomorrow will be tomorrow's problem. Come on—you're the one who always says not to sit around and stew over things."

Caroline wordlessly took his hand and let him pull her to her feet. He wrapped his arm around her for a moment, pressing his lips to the top of her head. Either he was psychic, or her face had looked much worse than she'd realized when she'd started to think about her mom. Or, she amended, possibly his thoughts had turned in the same direction when she brought up Kol. In any case, she grabbed her purse, pressed a kiss to his lips, and followed him back out to the car.

-0-

Unseen by either of them, Freya and Bonnie remained in the living room. Freya stretched her hands out towards the blazing fireplace; even though she couldn't feel the heat, she missed being warm after a thousand years in the veil, and would sit by the fire out of habit.

Bonnie watched the car containing her best friend and the monster she loved back out of the driveway, regarding it critically. Was he learning, changing from being with her? Or was he just behaving that way when she was around? She couldn't know for sure—and she really didn't like not knowing.

-0-

"You look wrecked," Elena commented as she slid into the seat across from Caroline in the Grill booth where she'd installed herself, still wearing sunglasses, to mainline a combination of black coffee and sugary rainbow smoothie. She was still wearing her sunglasses, and her hair was a mess.

"I _feel_ wrecked," she moaned. "Of course I don't remember until I'm completely wasted that we were supposed to formally submit housing applications today…" It had been nearly 3am, she'd been sprawled on a sofa, Klaus had been sitting on the floor with his back to that same sofa while they made conversation of the variety that doesn't make sense sober, when she'd sat bolt upright, shouting in drunken horror about the fact that she needed to finalize dorm stuff tomorrow with Elena. That had been uncharacteristically poor planning, on her part.

"What time did you stop drinking and go to bed last night?" Elena asked quietly, opening her laptop and logging into her student account.

"Well, I needed another drink to calm down after that," she admitted sheepishly, "so I wasn't asleep until probably four thirty. I slept through five alarms and Klaus had to come into my room and basically drag me out of bed, otherwise I definitely wouldn't have made it in time. I don't think he went to bed at all—he was up painting the whole night.

"What's he like when he's drunk?" Elena asked, face scrunching in an awkward smile of morbid curiosity.

"Mostly a fun, kinda' snarky, sarcastic drunk," Caroline replied, finishing her coffee just as Jeremy arrived to refill it. "Although Rebekah said that once in a while he's the depressed, sentimental kind. Usually he just mocks everyone he can think of, complains about music, flirts shamelessly…" she trailed off, losing her train of thought as it got muddled up in her pounding headache. She knew the hangover wouldn't last long—perks of being a vampire—but the next half hour was going to completely suck. She opened her own laptop, signed into her account, and started filling out forms.

"Don't see why we have to do this… I already _said_ what building we wanted…" she muttered, finishing her smoothie.

"Have I mentioned this week how amazingly grateful I am that you did the applications for us?" Elena asked with a smile. "'Cause it would suck to have to defer a semester because I was busy being an emotionless bitch."

"Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm the best," Caroline said with a smirk, then pressed the heel of her hand into her forehead, like she could push the headache out. Her phone chirped, and she blinked hard a few times before looking at it. Klaus had sent her a picture of a pile of canvases doused in different colors of paint, like he'd basically thrown a tantrum, then piled the pieces in one spot and splatter painted them. "Um…" she murmured out loud. "I think he's still pretty drunk."

[I'm going out to buy more supplies] he texted her a moment later. She snorted with laughter.

[No kidding] she responded.

[Don't touch the pile] he instructed. She frowned, but then a second message came through. [I think I might paint it later. When I have clean canvases.]

[I won't] she agreed, setting down her phone with another laugh and continuing to fill out her form. ' _Weirdo artist_ ,' she thought, shaking her head a little.

"Speaking of drunk people," Elena said in a quiet, serious voice. "Have you heard from Stefan lately?"

"No, not recently," Caroline responded, finishing a page and hitting "next." "I've messaged him a few times, but he hasn't responded. I'm giving him a little space before I get on his case about coming home and drying out. Don't forget to manually select 'triple,' in the bottom left hand corner." Elena nodded, hitting the check box.

"I've just had this… I dunno, sinking, nervous feeling about him," she said with a heavy sigh. "I don't know what's wrong. I mean, there's no danger anywhere near here—we took care of Silas, most of the Originals have left the country, Klaus is busy wrecking his own house, all the werewolves have left town… I just have this weird… feeling."

"Maybe it's guilt," Caroline said automatically. "You _are_ basically honeymooning with his brother, after all. I know you guys parted on good terms, but that's still gotta sting—it's not like Damon's exactly the worthiest candidate for your affections." She knew her hangover was fading when she picked up on Elena's immediate physical stiffness—her irritation crackling through the air before she even spoke.

"Are you _ever_ going to let that go?" she demanded.

"He's _Damon_ ," Caroline groaned, rolling her eyes, then thinking better of it when that brought her headache back. "Ow," she squeaked quietly, pushing her sunglasses up to rub her eyes.

"I know you guys have sucky history," Elena said huffily, "but I think you're being pretty unfair, all things considered." If Caroline hadn't been hung over and moving a little slower than usual, she probably would have had some snappy comeback about how Klaus hadn't compelled Elena to be his sex-and-blood slave, which would have led to Elena retorting that Damon hadn't killed Caroline's remaining family and then killed Caroline herself for some selfish dark magic ritual. However, Caroline _was_ hung over, which was fairly lucky for their friendship and future-roommate status; by the time she had her wits about her to say something, Jeremy had arrived with Elena's pancakes and coffee, giving the blonde vampire time to consider if it was a good idea to get into this fight right now. Elena apparently thought the same thing, because she quickly changed the subject, suggesting they look up pictures of the dorm rooms so they'd know what furniture to buy.

-0-

"Looks like the boys are having fun," Thierry Dalmira commented as he scrolled through his cousin Sean's Facebook.

"They _should_ be focusing on uncovering any other witchcraft-related items they can find," Marguerite grumbled. "I'm thrilled they found what we need, but I refuse to believe that Esther Mikaelson had nothing else of magical value in that house. We're not funding his dig for kicks."

"Well, she lived twice, right?" Thierry checked, rubbing his forehead under his ever-present cap. "Maybe she summoned her magical items when she came back to life?"

"Or maybe there's someone interfering with the dig," Marguerite murmured, "and Kieran's too interested in sketchbooks and trash piles to notice. Who does he have on his team? Have they all been verified?"

"It's mostly interns from Harvard," Thierry responded, pulling up a picture. "Here—Sean took a selfie with everybody—I think this is most of the team." He handed his phone to his aunt. She took it, zoomed in and moved the picture around to look critically at each face, and read the tags that went with them.

Then she froze.

"Aunt Marge?" Thierry asked, resisting the urge to wave a hand in front of her face like they do in the movies.

"Pack a bag, Thierry," she instructed suddenly, thrusting the phone back into his hand and standing bolt upright, her wheeled office chair rolling away until it bumped to a stop against the window behind her. "We're going to Mystic Falls."

"We're what?" Thierry exclaimed, sticking his phone into his pocket and following his aunt in confusion.

-0-

When Klaus arrived home, he dropped off the stack of canvases he'd bought in the studio, critically surveyed the messy pile on the floor and the way the paint had run over it in his absence, and then noticed Caroline's heartbeat was coming from the back porch. He hadn't really seen her at all that day—hauling her out of bed that morning didn't count, so he headed out to see what she was up to. He found her writing a list on a piece of notebook paper with a black sharpie.

"Hey," she greeted him, quickly flipping the paper over, but he'd seen the header—it read "I hate Damon Salvatore" in block letters.

"Hello, Love," he responded with a confused frown. "Are you preparing bullet points to try and convince Elena to run back to Stefan?" she glared at him, unimpressed, then sighed and turned the paper back over.

"Not exactly," she admitted. He scanned the list, feeling his blood pressure rise. She'd documented in brief the reasons why she hated Damon, and even though he knew what that excuse for a worm had done to her, the reminder still made him want to kill the whelp.

"I don't remember who said it, but when I was little, I heard this quote. 'Refusing to forgive is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.' So when I catch myself pointlessly hating on someone, I have this… this weird little thing that I do." She finished the line she was writing, capped the marker, and messily rolled the paper into a loose tube, crumpling it a little so it would stay long and stiff.

Then she picked up a lighter she'd set on the patio table beside her, and set one end on fire.

"It's not that I suddenly like the guy," she sighed. "It's just that hating him hurts me, not him. I don't have the energy to waste on him. So, I… burn the wrongs," she finished with a shrug. "Weird, I know. I like having a physical action—makes it feel more real than just deciding in my head to let go."

Klaus also shrugged. "I wouldn't know much about forgiveness, Love," he responded, lips curving up at one side, eyebrows rising and contracting a little—his "I'm an Original/Hybrid/Bad Guy/Not American/Not from this Time Period, and therefore this doesn't really apply to me" face, as Caroline had started to think of it. Then he narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips, watching her and the fire she still held.

"Did you ever burn me?" he asked as she dropped the last scrap of paper before it could singe her fingers, letting it burn out on the concrete. "Burn my wrongs," he clarified, his eyes flashing with something like amusement, like he was saying that he was proud of all the dark things he did—but she could see a hint of concern behind the bravado. She smiled.

"Yes I did," she responded, standing up and grabbing her things to head back inside.

"When?" he asked, following her in.

"A while ago," she said vaguely, and watched in amusement as impatience blossomed across his face.

"How much of a while?" he asked. She turned around, pecked him on the lips, and then continued walking.

"After the Twenties Decade Dance," she admitted. "You and Tyler having an alpha male pissing contest reminded me why wasting energy on hate is a bad idea," she continued with a shrug. She expected him to get annoyed, but he just looked thoughtful.

"Klaus?" she asked, frowning, after he'd been silent for longer than she liked.

"Earlier than I thought," he admitted with a little smirk. "Buddha said it originally, by the way," he added as an afterthought, shutting the door behind them. "'Unforgiveness is like grasping a hot coal to throw—you burn your own hand.' Something along those lines."

Caroline hummed in vague interest. "Friend of yours?" she asked impishly.

"I swear," he sighed, rolling his eyes heavenward and opening his hands like he expected divine intervention to come down and help him, "I believe in you Caroline that someday, _someday_ you're going to get a handle on this world history thing…"

"Nah," she responded, "I'll just cheat off you forever. Mr. _Original Source_." He growled, she laughed, and they headed towards the sound of Alphonse laying out lunch.

-0-

"Why can I not simply _kill_ them?" Alexander demanded in a deep rumble. He lay on his stomach on a flat rooftop, binoculars trained on two blonde heads, watching them as they made their way down the street.

"You can't do much of anything without some white oak," Quetsiya sighed, leaning against a chimney, arms folded, knowing that her face would be completely unfamiliar to anyone who might choose to look up.

"I thought you said you were going to get me the stake," Alexander snapped, putting down his binoculars and rolling over to glare up at his maker. "You help me kill Rebekah and her monstrous brothers, I help you kill Silas, together we rid the world of these abominations—that was the deal."

"We need White Oak to kill the Mikaelsons, and I'll need the cure to kill Silas—the doppelganger Katerina has the cure and is protected by Elijah, so we can't kill Silas until we kill the Mikaelsons," she sighed.

"So get me the stake!" Alexander hissed. Rebekah and Matt had vanished into the crowd, so he stood up, towering over Quetsiya.

"Not that simple," she responded coolly.

"You're the most powerful witch who ever lived," Alexander exclaimed, throwing his arms wide. "Summon it!"

" _Not that simple_ ," she repeated. "I could get it away from the Hybrid, of course, but he's not alone. I'm not stupid enough to get into a fair fight with Freya Mikaelson.

"That's the one that died young, right?" Alexander checked, perplexed. "She caught a plague or something, did she not? What does she have to do with anything?"

"She didn't _catch_ the plague—she _cured_ it," Quetsiya corrected. "Directly channeled the power of the sun—which was supposed to be impossible, by the way—and cured over eight thousand people in one afternoon before the power feedback killed her. Of course, no one knew that but her mother—Esther never even told her husband. But she never let any of her children practice magic after that—a shame, really, since her bloodline was so powerful. That Freya, though—she was a true prodigy. The spell she used to absorb and control the power from the sun is the same spell that's used to make daylight rings; even Esther, with all her skill, could only imitate a shadow of her child's power.

"As long as Freya's spirit is following the Hybrid and his budding romance with that teenage twit, I can't get within sniffing distance of the white oak stake," she finished matter-of-factly.

"So then what do we _do_?" Alexander demanded.

"Patience, warrior," the witch admonished him. "I have a plan."

-0-

When Caroline wandered into the living room that night, she found Klaus lounging on the couch, massive sketchpad resting on one arm, charcoal pencil in his free hand. She padded up behind him, and leaned over the back of the couch so far that her chin was resting lightly on his shoulder.

"I'm surprised you're still up," he murmured, never pausing in his drawing.

"You're the one who stayed up all night," she responded with a laugh.

"Thousand years of experience, Love," he reminded her. She turned her attention to the wooded landscape dotted with small buildings that he'd rendered in black and white on the page.

"Is that your hometown?" she asked. He held it up a little so she could see better.

"Yours too, technically," he replied. "I've been feeling nostalgic," he admitted. Caroline rounded the sofa to sit down beside him, and he flipped back a few pages, then wrapped an arm around her.

"The Grill would be right about here," he started, pointing out a space between buildings in the drawing. "When I was growing up, this building here was sort of like our town hall—the community leaders would gather there to discuss things and render judgement. That's why it's so easily accessible to the tunnel system that runs under the town; they expanded the natural tunnels so they could evacuate the council building, if they needed to." He turned to the next page.

"This was our house," he began, and started to describe his childhood home. Caroline curled into his side, captivated by the way he'd brought history to life in images on the page. When he ran out of drawings to describe, he continued talking about his home, turning to fresh pages to sketch out things and people as he brought them up. She'd seen him drawing or painting from a distance before, but this… this was somehow more intimate; he was letting her inside of the process of creation.

It was at times like this where she felt like she really got to see the real Klaus—who he was at his core, who he'd been before a thousand years of pain and danger had warped and hardened him into the admittedly evil man she'd met that awful senior prank night. When he was doing art, or engaging in playful banter—when his eyes would light up with mischief and even if he didn't have paper and pencil he'd sometimes gesture like he was drawing things in the air with his fingertips—that was when she felt like she saw him the most clearly.

And he was _glorious_ —this ancient, young, cruel, loving, creative wolf-man who spoke flippantly of death and sometimes taught college for fun. In that moment, she could see nothing but him—the sketches were beautiful, certainly, but she was hyperaware of the man beside her, the heat coming off of him, the sensual tones of his voice. After a little while, he set the pad down and went to wrap his arm back around her and keep talking, but she turned into him, pressing her lips to his.

Talking was not the intimacy she craved right then.

He responded enthusiastically, pulling her onto his lap, his hands tracing now-familiar patterns onto her skin. Every inch of her felt _hungry_ for his touch—she couldn't get enough of him, couldn't be devoured by his burning skin fast enough. She didn't normally rip her clothes, but her shirt was in the way and she couldn't wait—couldn't bear to pull away, and in an instant it was in shreds on the ground. Klaus was clearly in the same mindset—his hands found the clasp of her bra, and in the brief space where she shrugged out of it, he pulled off and discarded his shirt as well.

No possible interruption on God's green earth could have been loud enough to take their attention from each other.

 _Finally_.

-0-

Sophie Dalmira was half asleep as she trudged to the mail room in her carpet slippers, rubbing her eyes and yawning so hard she could barely see to put one foot in front of the other.

"Good morning!" Drew, the overly-peppy mailroom attendant exclaimed, as he did every morning. "Having a fantastic day so far, Soph?"

"One of these days I'm going to put ex-lax in your coffee," Sophie growled as she fumbled around in her box to retrieve her mail. "Watch you explode when you pull that morning-person crap."

"Like you'll ever be awake enough to get at my coffee," Drew quipped. Sophie clamped a pile of sale fliers and a few letters under one arm, and stared blearily at the small package left in her hand. It was covered in "fragile contents" warnings.

Suddenly, she was completely awake.

"See ya, Drew," she muttered, turning and striding quickly back up to her apartment.

"What'd ya' get?" Nia asked, pouring two mugs of coffee and sliding one towards the witch.

"Seeds," Sophie responded shortly. "A project for my aunt." Dropping the rest of the mail on the kitchen table, she took her coffee, nodded her thanks, and quickly headed to her room to open the package.

"I can't believe you actually found some, you crazy old bat," she whispered as she undid layer after layer of protective packaging to reveal the little worn leather bag inside. Gently easing it open, she slowly poured the contents onto a clean tray on her desk.

"I don't believe it," she repeated, picking up one of the White Oak seeds and rolling it gingerly between her fingers.

From the Other Side, Esther surveyed her thoughtfully.

"It all rests on you now, child," she murmured, hoping the young Dalmira witch could make the world safe from the evil she'd created…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Wait, no sex scene?" Yeah, no. I'm hella ace - my *mother* had to help me write just that part so it'd be semi-realistic from a straight person's perspective. No smut here I'm afraid.
> 
> Of course, I'm also Aro and yet people tell me I write romance pretty convincingly... I think it's because I grew up reading so much of it/seeing it on TV. Just because I don't experience it myself doesn't mean I don't know what it is in theory. Whereas I've spent a significantly shorter period of my life with free exposure to well-written smut, so I have a lot less source material of what that's like for allosexual people.
> 
> Anyway, I'm rambling. You get it. No dicks in this story (unless you count the fact that Damon Salvatore is basically a walking dick. I love him and all but damn!)


	8. Champagne and Vervain

Klaus usually woke up fairly quickly, but today his mind was slow to come out of the warm haze of sleep. He could feel heat all around him—brilliant shafts of summer sunlight were pouring through the windows, he saw when he cracked one eye lazily open—he was loosely tangled in sheets, and Caroline was pressed into his side, her head on his chest, still completely asleep.

He lay there for a long while, breathing, holding her, not really thinking of anything in particular. He rarely experienced this combination of bliss and peace, and was in no rush to disturb it.

He felt it when Caroline woke—there was a subtle change in her heartbeat, and her muscles shifted ever so slightly. But she lay still as well, her body fitting so perfectly with his; a compatibility he'd noticed before, but which had never been quite so appropriate as it now was, after last night. Eventually, as wakefulness well and truly washed over him, he lifted a hand and gently started to play with her hair, which was loosely fanned over her back and his chest.

"Morning, Love," he murmured as her felt her shift a little in response to his touch. She tilted her head up to press a kiss to his jawline.

"Morning," she whispered back. He wasn't sure how he managed to hear a smile in her voice—but hear it he did. He glanced down and was greeted by the exact expression he'd imagined. She was radiant—the sunlight making a halo out of her hair, beams of it melted into her eyes and shining from her face. She stretched up further and gently kissed his lips. "I love you," she breathed.

"And I you," he responded, pulling her closer to him and kissing her back. Somehow the feeling of her skin under his hands, her body where it was pressed against his, was so delicious it made him desperate for her, like he could never get enough—and at the same time, so all-consuming and perfect that even a taste of her was too much.

But for Klaus, too much was always just right.

In minutes, she was moaning again like she had last night.

-0-

When Alphonse arrived at work that morning, he noticed with a sort of professional detachment the trail of garments across the living room. Harder to ignore, however, were the sounds from above his head. With a sigh, he awkwardly pulled out a pair of headphones and stuck them in his ears, thankful that the kitchen was not in close proximity to the master bedroom. Quickly he headed off to prepare breakfast, wondering distractedly if they were even going to get up for it.

'Oh, well,' he thought, shrugging to himself. 'I'll stick to things that are good cold—just in case.'

-0-

"You know, that's kinda' creepy…" Jeremy commented as he released the pull-up bar and turned to stare at Bonnie, who was sitting in the rowing machine, watching him work out with a smirk on her face.

"Hey, it's a public gym," Bonnie reminded him with a wink and a shrug, gesturing at the two soccer moms on elliptical machines, so engrossed in their conversation with each other that they didn't notice or care that there was a teenager talking to himself on the other side of the room.

Jeremy had practically blackmailed Damon into paying for him to get a gym membership so that he would have something to do that wasn't in the same building where the vampire was pretty much constantly banging his sister. He would've preferred to be out hunting vampires—he was still one of The Five, after all—but at least this way he could keep in good shape for when the supernatural axe inevitably fell again.

"Such a great example you're setting for that little witch in the green dress," Jeremy quipped, taking a long drink from his water bottle and laying down on a mat in preparation for sit-ups.

"Hey, Freya's been dead for centuries," Bonnie said with a laugh. "Pretty sure she's seen it all. Besides, I don't see her around here—do you?"

Jeremy snorted, then quickly acted normal when one of the employees walked past.

-0-

"So, how do you know Edward Schumerfeld?" Caroline asked as she fingered the massive diamond pendant Klaus had strung around her neck in preparation for the famous jeweler's shareholder luncheon. It was shaped like a curling flame—had to be at least six carats, the whole thing carved from a single transparent gem, and in the center of the curl nestled a blue and gold streak of fire-opal. This shape was Schumerfeld Jewelry's signature design, but few people could afford something like this, and she'd never seen one half as big.

"I invested in his grandfather's little diamond business a century and a half ago," Klaus responded offhand. "I turn up every now and again, when I'm in the mood. Granted, he thinks I'm my own great-grandson—the prodigal son finally returning to take over the family business after a long stint world traveling, that sort of thing."

"And the flame design—that's not ironic at all," Caroline quipped, gently setting the jewel back in its place between her collarbones.

"On the contrary—I think it suits you. You may be a vampire—but you, my dear, are all fire," he assured her, running one long finger gently down her jawline without taking his eyes from the road. She shivered a little under his touch, her face heating up.

"This one-pony town is deplorably lacking in excuses for you to wear silk and heels," he continued, placing his hand back on the steering wheel. "You might not let me take you abroad yet—terrible decision, really…"

"Klaus…" she growled, raising an eyebrow.

"But," he finished, "I will have you used to this lifestyle however I can. Though, you should really reconsider your stance on sticking so close to home," he added, mock glaring at her.

"I'm doing college first," she reminded him for what had to be the hundredth time that summer—and easily the tenth time that day. When they'd gone to look through the wardrobe for an appropriate dress for her, he'd kept pulling out fur coats and sundresses and talking about a round-the-world luxury cruise. She'd settled on a gold and orange cocktail dress, in an attempt to bring out the colors in the ridiculously fancy pendant. She'd also vetoed the cruise—they wouldn't even be back in the US by September. He'd been in a huff for a while after that, but had brightened a little when she mentioned that she might be up for a smaller vacation—if and only if he solemnly swore she'd be back in time for Freshman orientation.

" _And not just in time to get dropped off at the front gate in your personal jet," she'd said quickly. "In time to pack my stuff in my car and drive there like a normal Freshman." He'd feigned disappointment, but raised his right hand, smirked, and assured her with some semblance of actual seriousness that they'd land back in Virginia by August 1_ _st_ _._

" _But until then," he'd said, pulling out another possible dress with a flourish, "Enough with this business of us spending the summer dealing with the endless responsibilities taking up all of our time. Today is a party day—should be right up your alley."_

" _Should be," she'd agreed with a smirk, then proceeded to strip off her clothes right then and there to try on the dress._

_It fit perfectly._

_Needless to say, it was a while before she had time to learn that little fact._

"Today, my dear, is about getting people used to seeing you with me," Klaus explained as he pulled into the long brick driveway of a fancy rich-person mansion. "They're only human here, of course, but my family does have a place in high society, even among mortals. Best to get your foot in the door—for when you eventually do Princeton."

"Plus you just wanted to dress me up again," Caroline added with a smirk.

"Actually, I was more looking forward to when I _un_ dress you later this evening," Klaus responded with the most perfect leer Caroline had ever seen. But she raised an eyebrow.

"You shouldn't have driven us in a sports car," she commented blandly.

"I have endless faith in your skill in such matters, my dear," he responded with a laugh.

-0-

"Thanks," Elena called through the little window as she accepted a pair of ice-cream cones and headed out to the picnic tables to give one to Damon.

"I'm just saying," Damon continued, accepting his ice cream, "there's no reason for you to have to drive yourself. We can pack most of your stuff in my car, I'll drop you off, then I can bring the rest the next day—it's not like it's that far."

"No way, Damon," Elena said, yet again. "If I take _my_ car and drive alone, I can fit everything in at once, _and_ have some room to take some of Caroline's stuff."

"How do you know her Hybrid sugar-daddy isn't going to have his minions move her in?" he asked, mouth full of ice cream.

"Because she'd kill him for making a scene like that on her first day of Freshman year," Elena snorted. "I don't think even Klaus is dumb enough to think that would fly."

"I dunno," Damon quipped, "somehow I can see Caroline Forbes having servants—and if I can see it, then I'll be you Klaus can see it."

"Damon," Elena groused, raising an eyebrow, but Damon's attention had shifted, and he was staring, frozen, over Elena's shoulder.

"Excuse me," a familiar voice said, and Elena twisted around to see what had surprised her boyfriend—and almost dropped her ice cream. "Did I hear you mention Caroline Forbes?"

-0-

"Miss?" a nervous-looking usher greeted Caroline just as she and Klaus had begun to excuse themselves from the polite chitchat with the unspoken agreement between their sparkling eyes that they were going to _somehow_ manage to take a dip in the obviously for-decoration-purposes-only fountain. Naturally the usher looked nervous—Klaus's face once he entered their space was enough to make any human shake in their shoes, just out of instinct.

"Yes?" she asked with a barely-suppressed sigh. ' _Leave my Bruce Wayne fantasies alone, will you?_ ' she thought irritably.

"Y-you have a call on the house phone from an Elena Gilbert," he announced uncomfortably, shooting furtive glances in Klaus's direction. Caroline's brows contracted in confusion, she pursed her lips and then held up her index finger to Klaus before following the usher to the lobby where they kept the phone. Klaus leaned back in his chair, sipping his drink moodily—couldn't Elena Bleeding Gilbert leave them alone for one day?—but when he heard Caroline's greeting, he smirked, his mood improving a little.

"This had better be important," Caroline grumbled into the phone.

" _It is,"_ Elena assured her, sounding deadly serious. " _Care, someone's in town asking for you. She says she's your aunt."_

"I don't have any aunts that I know of," Caroline responded hesitantly, trying to think of any family friends who might have said something like that. But Elena knew every last one of them.

" _I know_ ," Elena responded. " _But Caroline… she looks like your mom_ ," she admitted quietly. " _Like… a_ lot _like your mom. I think she might be legit_." Caroline's heart stammered a little bit. She felt Klaus approaching; he must've been listening in.

" _I don't want to freak you out_ ," Elena continued, " _but there's kind of a precedent for people's relatives to roll into town knowing about vampires and all of that—I told her you were in a bad car crash a few months ago, and that you were at a doctor's appointment, so I didn't know when I'd be able to get ahold of you. Makes you sound really human, y'know?"_

"Yeah," Caroline agreed. "Good thinking. Thanks, Elena. We'll be back soon. Where are they now?"

"At the Grill, having lunch," Elena responded. "Jeremy's keeping an eye on them. He had to call Bonnie to get her to do a locator spell on you—we couldn't reach you or Klaus."

"We're at a party—our phones are both off," Caroline responded distractedly. She heard Klaus somewhere behind her, summoning the valet to fetch his car.

' _What is going on, all of a sudden_?' she wondered in shock as she said goodbye to Elena and hung up the phone. ' _Where did this mystery aunt come from_?'

-0-

"Absolutely not!" Caroline exclaimed as she pulled on plain denim shorts and sorted through a drawer full of shirts.

"If there's a chance they're hunters here to _kill_ you," Klaus started, gesturing widely.

"If there's a chance they're totally innocent long-lost family, and you _scare_ them half to death because you think there's a chance they're hunters, then we'll have to deal with them calling the cops as soon as they get back to whatever woodwork they crawled out of," she cut him off. "You're not coming."

"It's a public restaurant, Love," he reminded her in a growl. "You can't exactly stop me."

" _Seriously, Klaus?_ " she hissed, yanking on a shirt and turning to put her fists on her hips and glare at him.

"What if I sit at the bar?" he groaned, rubbing a hand across his eyes, irritation making his teeth feel sharp. He pushed them back into place with his tongue. "Pretend not to know you until something goes wrong."

Caroline weighed that idea against the possible risks. If they weren't hunters… but then again if they were… vivid memories of what had happened with her father flooded her mind, and suddenly her knees felt awfully weak.

"Okay," she assented, voice suddenly meek. "That'll work."

"Caroline…" he murmured, shifting towards her as he noticed the abrupt change in her demeanor.

"I'm fine," she assured him a little too quickly, wrapping her infinity watch around her wrist and fumbling with the clasp, fingers a little numb. Klaus was at her side in an instant, long fingers carefully fiddling with the tiny pieces of metal.

"I won't interfere until something goes wrong," he promised.

" _Unless_ something goes wrong," she corrected, but with very little strength in her voice.

"Fine— _unless_ ," he grumbled.

"Overprotective boyfriend," she quipped, kissing him quickly and stepping away to find earrings.

" _Reasonably_ protective _Original_ , with plenty of experience with both hunters and your dreadful luck, my dear," he responded with a humorless laugh. She faked punching him in the ribs over that one—he caught her loose fist and pulled her in for a kiss.

-0-

Caroline saw her aunt from the moment she walked into the Grill. She was easy to pick out from Elena's description— _looks a lot like your mom_. Indeed, she was stunned by the resemblance. The woman raised her eyes to scan the doorway, and her expression transformed to one of excited, surprised recognition as soon as she was Caroline.

' _How does she know what I look like?_ ' Caroline wondered, entering the restaurant and approaching the booth where her aunt and two other people were waiting for her. Then she saw Sean.

"Sean, what's up?" Caroline greeted him in confusion.

"We're distant cousins, apparently," he responded with a laugh. "Caroline, meet Marguerite Dalmira." He gestured at her aunt, and Caroline shook her hand over the table, and sat down beside Sean, both grateful that there was someone she knew in this conversation and confused by him saying that apparently they were related.

"And this one's Thierry," Sean added, gesturing to a thin man in his mid-twenties wearing a grey cap and a vest over his button-down. He looked very artsy-hipster, she thought as she shook his hand too. Probably played guitar and frequented off-the-beaten-track coffee shops.

"We saw your picture on Sean's Facebook," Marguerite explained. Out of the corner of her eye, Caroline saw Klaus enter the restaurant and head to the bar. Was he as noticeable to these strangers as he was to her? She thought he stuck out like a wolf among Chihuahuas, but then again, nobody in this bar besides herself and Jeremy knew that he wasn't just another human. "You look so much like my sister… and then when we looked you up, we found out you were her daughter—and also…" she trailed off, looking regretful.

"Yeah," Caroline responded around the sudden lump in her throat. "She died in the line of duty a few months ago. Police still haven't caught the shooter." It was spooky, explaining this to a complete stranger… a complete stranger with her mother's face. She wondered if Silas had somehow got out, learned a way into her mind and come to exact revenge. That would make more sense than this. Jeremy turned up with a cup of coffee she hadn't asked for—her unexpected family had finished lunch and were now nursing drinks—and she smiled up at him and took it. 'Keep your caffeine levels high,' she reminded herself sternly. 'Hold the cup, warm your hands. One cold handshake is nerves, two is suspicious.' She wrapped her hands casually around the cup.

"So, I don't mean to be rude," she began—better poke the elephant in the room as soon as possible and get it over with, "but my mom never told me about you. She said her family died in a mob shooting in New York when she was a teenager, and she'd moved to Mystic Falls to get away from it all—then became a cop to try and stop that happening to anybody else."

"Honey, I'm sorry," Marguerite sighed, "but the truth is, my sister ran away from home when she was nineteen. Our parents were wealthy, influential and strict—not a great combination for a teenager whose greatest ambition was to become a beat cop and catch bad guys." She smiled a little, as if at fond memories. Caroline nodded thoughtfully, absorbing that.

"How big is your family?" she asked, remembering the unexplained photo of the seven blonde girls she'd found in her mother's closet.

"Ginormous," Sean responded. "There are hundreds of us, spread all over the world, although grandfather's house is in Colorado, so we all call that 'home.'"

"How many siblings did my mom have?" Caroline pressed. "Was it just you and her, or were there more?" Marguerite shook her head.

"Our parents had seven children—all girls," she explained. "Contessa is the oldest, then Jane-Anne, then myself, Alana, Gracia, Celeste and Eleanora." Those were the names, all right, Caroline realized with shock. Their story was starting to check out. But they hadn't listed her mom.

"And… Elizabeth?" she prompted, a little confused.

"Eleanora," Marguerite repeated. "She must have changed her name when she moved here."

' _And kept my dad's name when she got divorced_ ,' Caroline remembered. '"Rich family with private detectives" _makes a little more sense than_ "I want it to stay consistent."' "I see," she said aloud.

-0-

"So we are all set for August 3rd," Scott, the Grill manager said, writing it on his event calendar and grinning at Carol Lockwood.

"Thanks, Scott," she responded, watching Klaus Mikaelson out of the corner of her eye. When she'd popped into the Grill to set up the venue for the next founders' party, she'd been surprised to see Caroline Forbes sitting with three people, one of whom was the spitting image of her late mother. Rather than joining them, Klaus was skulking at the bar, clearly focusing intently on their conversation. Clearly, something supernatural was afoot.

"Hello, Klaus," she greeted him cordially. He might've run her son out of town, committed countless murders and God-only-knew what else, but she was still the mayor, and she could still be polite.

"Mayor Lockwood," Klaus greeted her, sounding bored.

"Who is that woman talking to Caroline?" she asked quietly.

"Long lost aunt, apparently," Klaus responded, his voice darkening to a more serious tone. "I wasn't aware the dearly departed sheriff had a sister—much less six of them."

"Six sisters?" Carol repeated, sneaking another glance at the group out of the corner of one narrowed eye. "Liz's family died when she was a teenager—that's what she told me, anyway. She got married right away and moved to Mystic Falls to live with Bill. Basically rushed into the whole thing, too, she was so desperate to get out of the big city environment."

"I think that's the story everyone got," Klaus agreed, taking another sip of his drink.

"Hm," Carol hummed in agreement. "And do I want to know why you are stalking your girlfriend's family reunion?" she asked delicately.

"Because the last time one of my girlfriend's relatives turned up unexpectedly, he chained her up in a cellar, sprayed her with vervain and tried to burn the vampire out of her," he responded, turning to face her with a tight smile and cold, cold eyes that made her want to turn around and sprint for the door. "A little backup can't hurt," he finished smoothly.

"Right," she responded with only a small tremor in her voice. "I see. Well, as the mayor, I would appreciate it if you didn't solve any of… _those_ kinds of problems in public places? Or with murder? When visitors to my town keep going missing, that invites a police presence and media attention that I don't think any of us want."

"I'll do my _very_ best," he breathed back with such perfect sarcasm that, as she walked away, she wondered in concern if he might kill them just to upset her. She made a mental note to go to church and pray that Caroline never told him that she'd been the one to hand her over to Bill Forbes...

-0-

Caroline's head was spinning, trying to fit all the new information with everything she knew—or thought she knew—about her mom. The picture Marguerite painted of the rebellious nineteen-year-old running off in the middle of the night and vanishing without a trace—her love of crime novels apparently paying off in spades—sounded both not like her mom at all, and also more like her than Caroline could've imagined.

Apparently, the family also owned stuff—like, a lot of stuff. She'd have to compare notes later, but she thought maybe "Grandfather" was richer than Klaus. And all of this would have been charming and fascinating, if not for two tiny problems.

First, her mom was dead. This wasn't a conversation she could ever have with her, she'd never be able to sit down and hear about when she splattered brown hair-dye all over her shower, slipped out, then cropped her still-blonde locks close to her head, threw the hair out in a park trash bin so it wouldn't be found, then caught the midnight train going anywhere. Every two minutes or so, she would mentally bookmark something to get the true story later, and then realize she couldn't.

Second, about twenty minutes into the conversation, she remembered where she'd heard the name "Dalmira" before. It wasn't the name of a company or anyone famous—her original thought when she realized it was familiar.

No, it was that witch, Sophie's last name. The one who invented the original werewolf tea for her roommate, Nia. And witchcraft _did_ tend to run in bloodlines. Put that together with the "little coincidence" that Sean had _happened_ to be in her town, that her aunt had happened to see the picture he'd taken… The world was small, but not that small, she thought. She smelled foul play.

Caroline finished her second coffee, and then excused herself to use the restroom.

"Have Jeremy meet me in the back," she murmured to Klaus as she passed the bar, in a voice far too low for a human to hear, even if they'd been standing next to her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him nod almost imperceptibly. Once she was out of sight of her table, she turned left instead of right, heading to the Grill's storage room instead of the bathroom hallway. A minute or so later, Jeremy walked in.

"Is my mom's ghost hanging around near here?" she asked without preamble.

"Uh…" Jeremy paused uncomfortably. "No… she actually… I think she passed on, Caroline."

"Oh," Caroline responded lamely.

"She wasn't really a vampire that long—she never bit anybody or anything. She's been gone since the expression triangle closed. I think she passed on, found peace, y'know?" Caroline nodded, not trusting her voice. She'd thought her mom was still watching over her—that the whole supernatural ghost thing meant she'd never really lose her. But then again, it was really unreasonable to expect her to hang around forever, invisible, yelling mom-advice from the Other Side that Caroline couldn't hear anyway… Yes, this was better, she decided, taking a deep breath and blowing it out her mouth.

"I'm sorry," Jeremy said, squeezing her arm.

"I just wanted her side of the story," Caroline said quietly. "But… it is good, that she found peace." She mustered up a smile, then headed to the bathroom to let herself freak out for thirty seconds in relative privacy.

-0-

"They vervained your coffee," Klaus warned her in an ordinary speaking voice—practically a shout, considering how quietly he could speak.

"Thanks," she whispered back as she passed him.

"Just say the word, and I'll have you out of here in a second," he growled. She could see from his body language that he was only restraining himself from sauntering over there and tearing them apart in the most literal sense because she might want them alive.

"Not yet," Caroline responded, barely moving her lips as she approached Marguerite and the guys. She heard his impatient huff, and then saw him order another drink.

"So," Marguerite greeted her as she slid back into the booth, "Now that you've graduated, what are your plans? Are you living with your father?" Caroline froze—a pause so short it would scape human notice, but plenty long enough to weigh possible responses, for a vampire. She could say yes, and leave it at that, but if they were looking into records to find out about her mom and then found her dad's very public death certificate, it would be pretty hard to explain why she lied. If she said she was living alone, they might make a huge deal about it—the church ladies certainly had, at her mom's funeral. If she said she was living with a boyfriend, that would start quite the scandal—but then again, did she care? If they thought she was a teenage cautionary tale, maybe they wouldn't pay her as much attention, wouldn't find out about everything she was tangled up in, magically.

"I'm off to college in the fall," she finally said. "Until then I'm staying in town. I'll probably live in the dorm for my four years, then come back home in the summers." That was most of the truth—she just hadn't clarified that "home" meant Mikaelson Mansion. Then, steeling herself, she took a nonchalant sip of her coffee, keeping casual eye-contact with Marguerite as she responded.

"Right on the heels of losing your mother, sweetie?" she said, and then she paused a little, and Caroline could feel the tension drain out of the table as she set down the vervain-poisoned coffee, no visible reaction. She kept her mouth shut, letting the burns to her tongue heal while Marguerite clucked over her decision to start school so quickly after such a tragedy.

"I prefer to keep busy," she said when she had the chance, then took another sip, still carefully not reacting to the familiar pain. She saw Thierry visibly relax—if he was into the arts, it certainly wasn't acting, she thought with amusement.

"Well, you must at least come visit us for the summer," Marguerite insisted. "Family supports family, and all that. We'd all love to hear about how things went for your mom—and I know it would mean a lot to your grandfather."

"Thanks, but I really can't," Caroline said with her very best imitation of disappointment. "I don't know if my friends mentioned, but I was in a car crash last semester?"

"Yes, Elena said you were at the doctor's today," Sean responded. "Are you okay?" he sounded genuinely concerned. Now, _him_ being her cousin was a news flash she _liked_ , Caroline reflected.

"Yes, yes, I'm all good now," Caroline assured them, "and actually, to celebrate that, my boyfriend and I planned this trip—we're actually going to Paris for a little while. Anyway, he set up all the tickets and hotels and stuff already, so it's pretty much locked in—we're actually leaving town tomorrow. Then when I come back, I'll have to get ready to move into school. But I'd be happy to talk to you guys on the phone," she added, "if you want to hear stories about my mom."

"You're awfully young to be traveling with just your boyfriend," Marguerite commented, sounding a little scandalized.

"I'm a legal adult," Caroline reminded her coolly. Now _there_ was a precedent she needed to set immediately—she was an independent woman, and any family ties would be of the "camaraderie" variety, _not_ _authority_ of any kind. Marguerite's eyes narrowed, but she just finished her iced tea in one long gulp, then pulled a card out of her purse.

"Well, be sure you keep in touch," she said. "And let me know if you change your mind, okay, honey?" Her voice was sweet, but her eyes had a cool hardness to them that said she wasn't above working pretty hard to force a change of mind. Caroline stuck the card in her purse.

"Well, I should probably go," she announced, taking a short, third sip of her toxic coffee, for effect.

"Yeah, it's getting kinda' late," Sean agreed. "And those of us who don't get to go to Paris have to be at the dig site at six in the morning. Caroline snickered as her mouth finished healing.

"I'll talk to you guys later," she promised, getting up. Sean followed suit.

"Can I offer you a ride?" he asked.

"Yeah, that would be nice," she said, remembering much, much too late that Sean had seen her with Klaus, and had probably noticed him at the bar.

"Could you not mention to any of the grown-ups in… _our_ family… that I'm shacked up with a rich guy several years older than me?" she asked awkwardly once they were in Sean's rental car. That was a good enough excuse for everything, right? "I promise I'm not a gold-digger," she added. "It's just… complicated."

"Heh, sure," he agreed, turning on the engine and reversing out of his parking spot. "Don't worry—we're not _all_ stuffy and old-fashioned."

"Good," she sighed, laughing in relief. Of course, someday she was probably going to run into Sophie Dalmira, and then her vampirism would be exposed to everyone. But hopefully she'd have some warning—Klaus could fly her to a secret bunker in Antarctica and she could take selfies with penguins while they futilely searched for her. For right now, though, her secret was safe.

"He's a little possessive, though," Sean commented, wrinkling his nose and looking at her sidelong. "Sitting at the bar like that when you're meeting your family for the first time?"

"That was in case things got really awkward and I needed rescue," she said with a laugh. It was mostly true, after all. "If I got uncomfortable and needed an excuse to leave fast, he'd call me and say there was some kind of emergency."

"I see, I see," Sean responded, nodding. "That makes more sense. Guess you found a good one there, huh?"

"Guess I did," she agreed with the most genuine smile she'd showed all afternoon.

" _And_ he's rich," Sean added with a smirk.

"Shut up," she snorted, mock-glaring at him. Yeah, she decided as they pulled into the driveway, she could deal with him being her cousin.

-0-

"Bad news," Sophie announced as soon as Contessa Dalmira's face appeared on her phone screen and she swiped the green arrow to pick up the call.

"What happened?" Contessa asked.

"They're not viable," Sophie sighed, looking sadly at the pile of seed-shells on her work-desk. She'd split about half of them open and found only dust inside. "There's no life left in them—even I can't resurrect them at this point. If I remember my lore properly, that means all the magic was born into a new tree."

"If we get you the stake, could you grow one from that?" Contessa demanded.

"I don't think so," Sophie responded, rubbing her eyes. "Not if the tree's already been reborn."

"I see. We'll have to find the living sapling, then…" Contessa mused. "Thank you for trying, Sophia."

"Sure," Sophie responded, then disconnected the call. Of course, if she remembered her lore correctly, searching for the sapling wasn't going to be as simple as your average needle in a haystack…


	9. Far, Far Away

Klaus was already home by the time Caroline walked in the front door. She wasn't sure if he drove or ran—she hoped it was the former, just in case Sean recognized his car—but however he came to be there, he was at her side in an instant as soon as the door was closed.

"Are you all right?" he demanded just as she said, "I am _so_ glad I developed resistance to vervain!"

"Say the word and they're dead," he assured her, eyes alight with the sort of ancient, wild fury that only someone both truly evil and truly powerful could experience. For a moment, Caroline was vividly reminded of when he'd turned at prom, and somehow she'd uncomfortably found herself the only barrier between a snarling wolf and Damon Salvatore.

She realized two things simultaneously, in the moment that it took for the echo of his voice to fade. The first was that he was just as dangerous as a man as he had been as a wolf; he might have learned to control his form, but that didn't do anything about his temperament. The second was that, deep down, she didn't really want to be in the position to defend her enemies from her lover—she actually really liked the idea that anything that came after her would end up on the wrong end of the oldest and most powerful werewolf in all of creation.

Both of these realizations scared her—but the second more than the first. Wasn't she supposed to be one of the good guys?

"There's no need," she finally responded with a shrug. "They didn't figure it out; I 'proved' myself when I drank the vervain coffee, so now I can pump them for information about my mom."

"And when they eventually do find out?" Klaus growled.

"Then we'll figure out how to deal with it when it happens," she replied with a shrug.

"Should I include your winter coat, miss, or just your lighter autumn jacket?" Colleen asked from the top of the stairs when both immortals were silent for a moment. Caroline looked up in confusion.

"The girls are packing your things," Klaus explained. "We're leaving the U.S., for a pre-planned, expensive, _positively scandalous_ vacation with your boyfriend, remember?" he reminded her, arching one eyebrow and smirking a little. "I wasn't sure how fast we'd have to leave, so I texted the girls and had them start packing immediately."

"I mean, I said tomorrow," she started awkwardly, but then instinct took over, and she critically surveyed the jackets. "What climate are we headed to? How badly will I stand out if I stick with the thinner jacket?"

"Not badly, I should think," he responded, stepping aside a little so she could pass him and head up the stairs. "If we wind up somewhere extremely cold and you're having trouble blending, it's not like we can't buy you a coat," he added.

"Richie-Rich," she muttered fondly as she headed up the stairs to look over the packing and basically redo it all.

-0-

"Wait, you actually do have a private plane?" she exclaimed when they arrived at the airfield.

"Only as of a week ago," he responded. "I kept borrowing Downey's, but now that I don't have an immortal hunter following my every move, I can afford to be a little more ostentatious."

"Downey… as in _Robert Downey Junior_?" Caroline checked in shock. Klaus nodded. "As in _Iron Man_?" He nodded again. "You compelled _Iron Man_ to lend you his private plane. Repeatedly."

"No!" Klaus corrected her, feigning offense. "I go out for _drinks_ occasionally with 'Iron Man,' and when I need a plane, I ask nicely. I only compel him to forget the supernatural stuff. He's really quite an amusing fellow, even off screen."

"You're drinking buddies… with Robert Downey Junior," she repeated, still stunned.

"Well, Bob to his friends," Klaus supplied with a smirk. "See, I told you I had some."

"You didn't mention that 'friends' meant Robert Downey Junior!" she laughed as they boarded and she handed her suitcase to a tall man in some sort of dress-uniform. Klaus gave his bags to another similarly-dressed man, and then placed a hand on the small of her back to walk with her through the plane to the seating area. There were four comfortable leather seats, clustered around two little tables that folded out from the walls, and a cross between a double seat and a sofa at the back of the cabin.

"So," she asked after she sank down into one of the seats. "Where are we going at this hour?"

"It's 4:00am in Venice, Love," he said, sinking into the chair.

"Venice?" she checked. "What if I want to go to London?"

"Well, you'd have to walk up front and tell the gentlemen flying the plane to turn a little bit to the left," he responded with a laugh and a shrug. "But we _are_ doing Venice," he added, "so if you want to be back in the States by the first of August, I'd recommend starting there."

"Oh, is _that_ how it's going to be," she said, eyebrow flashing up briefly, like she was accepting a challenge.

"My plane, darling," he reminded her.

"And if we'd borrowed _Bob Downey's_ plane?" she asked impishly.

"Then it would be _my friend's_ plane," he countered. "Same basic result." Caroline stuck her tongue out.

"Why London?" Klaus asked, curious. Caroline shrugged awkwardly.

"I took Italian in school, but I don't know how good I am at it," she admitted. "I afraid that I'll spend half my time waiting for you to translate, or say the wrong thing." He grinned, and pulled a small jewelry box out of his pocket.

"I was wondering when you'd need this," he murmured, opening it up to show the little gold ear-cuff inside. Caroline frowned as she picked it up. It wasn't exactly her style, and he was usually so good at matching that.

"It's a magical translator," he explained. Her eyes widened. "Works on pretty much every spoken language. I found it with my mother's magical things—saved it for you. Once Terry confirmed there was nothing harmful in the mix," he added quickly when Caroline blanched at the mention of his mother. She nodded in recognition of Terry's skill, and fitted the cuff to her ear.

"How's it working?" Klaus asked in Norwegian. Caroline blinked in shock. It wasn't that she heard the words in English, or that she heard him speak and then a translation played from the cuff—she heard the Norwegian, and simply _knew_ what it meant.

"That's amazing!" She exclaimed, and without her telling it to, her tongue just started to form unfamiliar Norwegian words.

"For right now," Klaus continued, switching to Russian, "it'll just go along with whatever you heard last—until you get used to it. At least, that's what Terry said—can't say I've ever needed one."

"Show-off," Caroline laughed, words coming out in Russian.

-0-

"Venice," Elijah said as he leaned over the back of Katherine's chair while his lover looked at plane tickets on her tablet.

"Switzerland?" she reminded him in confusion, looking up at him.

"A stop along the way," he elaborated. "We have all the time in the world, after all, and if I'm going to ski, I'd prefer to avoid a surplus of travelling students."

"Because there won't be travelling students in Venice?" Katherine quipped, swiping up the list of countries until she found Italy.

" _Artistically-inclined_ travelling students," he corrected her. "Much less irritating than athletic daredevils. There's a ski competition next week that I think we'd both prefer to avoid."

"Hey, all the time in the world, right?" Katherine shrugged, selecting a pair of first class tickets. She liked the way that sounded when she said it—the taste of the words in her mouth. Katherine had never had a real relationship with another immortal before, and she was enjoying this one more than she could have ever imagined.

-0-

" _You're in Italy?"_ Elena exclaimed. " _You didn't tell me you were leaving the country_!"

"I didn't know until last night," Caroline responded with a laugh. "But I had to make something up so that I couldn't possibly go with my creepy new relatives, and Klaus kinda' took it literally. He's got a private plane and everything."

" _Didja join the mile-high club_?" she heard Damon call from the other end of the line.

" _Shut up, Damon_ ," Elena grumbled.

"None of your business, Damon," Caroline hissed.

"Yes, yes she did," Klaus responded, having crept up behind her after finishing in the shower, a fact that she hadn't noticed during her conversation.

"Klaus!" she snapped indignantly.

"What?" he asked innocently. " _I'm_ proud of it."

"But it's none of his business!" she growled. "Oh, hey, Elena, remember when Klaus borrowed a private jet to fly you all to the creepy Silas island?" she asked, changing the subject before a four-way argument about her sex life broke out across two continents. "Guess whose it was."

" _Um, he said it belonged to a businessman friend of his_ ," Elena remembered. Damon was snickering in the background, and Caroline thought she heard Elena lightly whack him.

"Robert. Downey. Junior. That was Robert Downey Junior's plane," Caroline exclaimed.

"What?!" Elena squealed. "Seriously!? Why would you not mention that?" she shouted a little more loudly. Caroline pulled the phone away from her ear and put it on speaker.

"I didn't exactly think it was important information at the time," Klaus responded with a bit of exasperation. "I'd been out drinking a few times with the man, but I hadn't actually seen one of his films until recently. You two are awfully excited about the fellow for both being in relationships…" He added, but Caroline could tell the sour tone was mostly feigned.

"Hey, acting is art," Caroline responded. "Me being in a relationship with you doesn't make Robert Downey Junior _not_ good art."

" _Dunno if you can beat out RDJ, man, no matter what she says_ ," Damon commented at full volume, while Elena exclaimed in irritation from the background. He must've stolen her phone.

"He says, despite his own girlfriend's reaction," Caroline retorted immediately.

" _Okay, enough_ ," Elena snapped, back in possession of her phone. " _Your aunt and cousin left this morning, so you should be safe when you come home_."

"Okay, thanks," Caroline said. "I'll let you go, then. We have a city to explore."

"Have fun!" Elena responded.

"We will," Caroline assured her, then hung up before Damon could make another off-color comment.

-0-

"I have seen things I can never unsee…" Bonnie exclaimed without preamble as she walked right through the wall into Jeremy's room.

"Hi, Jeremy, how's it going?" Jeremy mocked, smirking as the ghost of his dead girlfriend made her way effortlessly across the trashed floor to plop down on his bed and cover her head with her arms.

"I was checking up on Matt—new vampire and all," she explained.

"You walked in on him and Rebekah havin' sex, didn't you?" Jeremy guessed, scrunching up his face in distaste.

"A foursome, actually," Bonnie amended. Saw things I really don't need in my head for the rest of eternity…"

"Damn!" Jeremy exclaimed, stuck between "damn, that smooth player" and "damn, poor Bonnie," and "damn, Bonnie's dead in the first place."

-0-

"I'm running out of battery…" Caroline lamented as she took what must have been her thousandth picture of the city, and got a message warning her that she wouldn't be able to use the flash anymore—not that she was anyway; the sunlight on the water was so bright that it seemed to fill up the city, flowing above the canals and carrying them along with it.

"You're not going to be able to document the whole city, Darling," Klaus murmured in her ear. He was sitting so close beside her on the gondola that to get any closer she'd have to be on his lap. His arms were draped loosely around her, and every so often he'd press a kiss to her neck, jaw or ear. He'd spent the afternoon pointing out the different buildings, and telling her little vignettes about his experiences in them over the centuries. Behind them, the boatman—who she'd noticed also doubled as tour-guides most of the time—had fallen mostly silent, sensing that it was Klaus's time to show his lady around the city. However sometimes he'd add in comments during the Original's silence, giving Caroline a more modern perspective as well.

"I spent most of the seventies and eighties here," Klaus admitted. "I hated the eighties—the clothes, the hair, the music…" he shuddered dramatically.

"Hey, don't insult the classics," Caroline ribbed him playfully.

"Don't attach the word _classics_ to that miserable decade-long cacophony of noise," he growled, but he punctuated each word with a gentle kiss to the side of her neck, and she found it a _bit_ difficult to carry on an argument.

"We'll have to agree to disagree," was all she said before she couldn't keep up the façade of moodiness.

-0-

"You're not going to be able to track it with an ordinary locator spell," Margurite sighed, flipping through her mother's grimoire. "There's a specific spell passed down in our family for generations, ever since the beginning of the Dalmira line. But it's been faulty for the last few decades—something's interfering with it."

"The Mikaelsons?" Contessa suggested.

"More likely a rival coven who wants it for themselves," Caleb Dalmira responded as his third complicated locator spell fell apart. "But what about her—Caroline? Isn't she supposed to lead us to it—wasn't that the point?" Marguerite shook her head.

"She's nearly nineteen," she responded. "The elders seem to have gotten it wrong—if she was who she thought she was, she'd have shown it by now."

"So, going from scratch, then," Caleb sighed tiredly. "Wonder if we'll find the thing in my lifetime?" he muttered as an afterthought.

-0-

When Caroline initially saw Elijah, she didn't immediately react—she was a little surprised, but the oldest Original's presence didn't send up any red flags for her; he'd always been so calm and personable and trustworthy. What he was doing in Venice that particular day, she wasn't sure, but she supposed even he took vacations after having to deal with both his family's drama, and someone like Silas.

When Caroline initially saw Katherine, at first angled a little behind Elijah, she froze, her heart stuttering as she tried to make herself believe that was Elena, as she tried to comprehend that _Katherine_ was _here_ , out of everywhere in the world she could possibly have been. It wasn't that she had any serious aversion to the older vampire—sure, she'd terrorized her for a while, but she'd also turned her into a vampire, made her strong enough to fight back, and was the reason she'd met Klaus in the first place. She'd burned her name after they'd all gotten together and trapped her in the tomb, after Caroline realized that she was strong enough and smart enough that Katherine didn't have to be a threat. She wasn't a nice person, sure, but she rarely seemed to do any real harm—at least, not anything irreversible. But while she didn't have any particular reason to be horrified by Katherine's presence, she had every reason to feel her stomach leap into her mouth with fear as she realized that _Elijah's girlfriend_ was _here_ , where _Klaus was_.

When Klaus saw his brother, he felt a muted rush of irritation. Irritation because couldn't he get a summer's peace from his family, while he was practically honeymooning with Caroline Forbes? He'd released his famously problematic grip after Mikael died and the danger was past; they could all do as they liked, so why must they be underfoot while he was (finally) spending some quality time with Caroline? But it was muted because this was Elijah, and out of all his siblings, his big brother was, by a wide margin, the least annoying. Unlike Kol and Rebekah, he wouldn't go out of his way to get on Klaus's nerves.

When Klaus saw Katherine—right about the time that she turned her head and saw him—several things happened at once. First, Katherine's eyes widened in terror and her whole body seemed to freeze up while she shifted (probably unconsciously) a little closer to Elijah. Second, Klaus's hair started to stand up a little, and he felt his teeth sharpen, just a little bit. Third, Caroline interlaced their fingers and swallowed, hard. It didn't take a genius to interpret her meaning; she was trying to subtly and perhaps symbolically hold him back. W _hy_ he couldn't fathom, since Katherine had murdered her, but he could smell her apprehension as the gondola nosed into the dock and the driver bid them farewell.

To Katherine's credit, she didn't bolt, but by the time Klaus and Caroline were within human speaking distance of the older pair, she'd wrapped her arm around one of his and intertwined their hands, practically gluing herself to his side. Her eyes darted furtively from Klaus to Caroline, clearly trying to work out the magic formula for surviving this situation.

To Klaus's credit, he didn't kill her—or even try to kill her. Granted, his eyes narrowed, glinting with murderous intent, and his exhale sounded suspiciously like a quiet snarl; he had the look of a wolf when someone unwelcome placed a toe in his territory. Caroline got the feeling that if he'd been in wolf form, his hackles would be up, his fur bristling, his claws out, his ears back. But he didn't attack—not yet.

"Hello Niklaus," Elijah greeted his brother calmly. "Hello Caroline."

"Elijah," Klaus responded evenly, wrenching his eyes away from Katherine and schooling his face into a passable imitation of cordiality. Caroline didn't let go of his hand.

"It's an awfully small world, huh?" Caroline laughed awkwardly. How could Elijah, dating the person on the very top of his brother's hit list, have not known where Klaus would be?

"Miniscule," Katherine agreed quietly, dark eyes trained on Klaus, waiting for any indication that he was about to strike.

A long, uncomfortable silence followed, during which Elijah and Klaus seemed to be carrying on some sort of telepathic, territorial, weirdo-brother communication. Finally, Elijah spoke.

"Well, since we are all here, and since it is a lovely day, would you two care to join us for dinner at the Riviera this evening?" he suggested. The look Katherine was giving him was priceless—Caroline had to work hard not to laugh. Someone was sleeping on the couch tonight—if the girlfriend even survived long enough to kick him out of bed, she recalled, sobering immediately.

"You can't be serious," Klaus growled.

"Actually," Caroline piped up, mostly to remind him that she was there and not to kill anybody, "I'm pretty sure that's his default setting." It worked—the tension lessened by about half a degree, Elijah looked at her a little owlishly, Klaus looked down at her and smirked, and Katherine exhaled sharply through her nose with a laugh she couldn't quite suppress in time.

"And," Caroline added impulsively, "we'd love to come." Maybe if she and Elijah ganged up on Klaus a little, they could get him to mellow out enough not to kill Elijah's one true love. Maybe.

"Perfect," Elijah said smoothly as Klaus did a double take and glared at Caroline. "Shall we say, eight o'clock, then?"

"Sounds good," Caroline agreed for them both.

"Splendid," Elijah responded with a charming smile, and then offered his arm to Katherine, leading her away while subtly keeping his body between hers and his brother.

"' _Sounds good_ ,' does it?" Klaus demanded as soon as they were gone. "You don't seem particularly surprised… how long have you known about this?"

"A while," she responded with a shrug. "My mom had just died and Silas was trying to kill everyone else that I love—it sort of slipped my mind." Klaus huffed, not having a good comeback for that one. "Anyway, don't you think it's time you two, I dunno, buried the hatchet?"

"Have you met me, love?" he demanded, angling one eyebrow in disapproval. She began to lead him down a walkway so they wouldn't just be awkwardly standing on the pier while they talked.

"I know, I know, revenge is your thing, you're an evil villain, blah, blah, blah," she sighed. "But you've hounded her for five-hundred years just for wanting to survive—and if you'd done the spell with her, you'd have killed her permanently, and then you wouldn't have figured out how to make more hybrids. And Stefan, Damon and I wouldn't have been turned. So," she added, putting the pieces together and realizing it went further, "Elena would have died before you knew she existed. And you might still be running around the world looking for doppelgangers instead of strolling through Venice with me."

Klaus surveyed her silently as she argued, refusing to react or let on that she was making an impression until he'd had space to make up his own mind. She had a good point, he grudgingly supposed. But it set a horrid precedent, now that he was more publicly involved in the supernatural world, to just be handing out pardons…

"It would also make Elijah really happy," Caroline added, squeezing his hand. "And besides," she laughed, remembering suddenly, "she accidentally got us together, between turning me, luring you into town, and giving me some surprisingly good relationship advice. Personally, I think you owe Katherine her freedom by now," she finished with a shrug. "For services rendered."

"I'll take it into consideration," Klaus muttered, not wanting to give in, but also not wanting to quarrel when they'd only just got here. "What relationship advice?" he added, picking up on that belatedly.

" _Good_ relationship advice," Caroline repeated, eyes twinkling, and led the way back towards their hotel. "Something tells me that Elijah didn't invite us to casual dining. Come on—I need to change."

"Two hours early?" Klaus quipped, following her down the walkway.

"Well," she reminded him innocently, "it did take a pretty long time last time… between getting the clothes _off_ and getting them back _on_ …"

"This is a ploy—an _obvious_ ploy," Klaus grumbled, but did speed up.

"If it's obvious, then it's not a ploy," Caroline retorted. "Besides, it's not like I wasn't going to jump you the minute we got back to the hotel anyway," she added with a smirk. In spite of his rising irritation, Klaus grinned wolfishly at that, and swept her into his arms, closing the distance between them and the hotel in ten seconds—so fast that the eyes of the human pedestrians never even caught them passing by.

-0-

"So… I'd use my usual icebreaker," Katherine mused after a long, awkward silence, broken only by Elijah ordering a bottle of wine for the table, and Klaus adding a double shot of amaretto to the list for himself. "But I think I don't really want to know the answer."

"That's gotta be a first for you," Caroline snorted, sipping her water and hoping they hurried up with that wine.

"So, what brings you two to Italy, right at the same time as ourselves?" Klaus asked, gesturing at himself and Caroline.

"I believe the colloquialism is 'it seemed like a good idea at the time,'" Elijah responded, with a hint of a sigh. Katherine flashed her eyebrows in wry agreement. The gesture was so _Stefan_ … Caroline wondered absentmindedly who had learned it from whom.

"Well," Caroline broke in, " _we're_ here because my long-lost extended family found me on the internet and showed up out of the blue—and they know about vampires. They vervained my drink."

"Are you all right?" Elijah asked in instant concern.

"They didn't appear to suspect anything amiss," Klaus assured him, a shadow passing across his face, "but they could still be a threat. Getting out of the country for a few weeks seemed prudent. Besides which," he added, "Caroline's been remarkably resistant to anything international, and this seemed like as good an excuse as any."

"What?" Katherine exclaimed, frowning at Caroline, "what do you have against traveling?"

"I'm starting college in the fall," Caroline explained with a shrug. "I didn't want to get too busy on the other side of the planet and forget to submit some vital piece of paperwork."

"So, in other words," Katherine translated, sipping her own water, "you were scared that if you left Podunk-ville you wouldn't want to go back."

"I didn't say that," Caroline muttered quickly, but it was evident to everyone from her flaming cheeks that Katherine had, in her usual blunt manner, hit the nail on the head.

"Humanity is exhausting once you've left it behind, darling," Klaus commented, just as the wine and his amoretto finally arrived.

"But your responsibility to your commitments is to be applauded," Elijah added, raising his glass in toast to her.

"Well it sounds boring when you say it like _that_ ," Katherine snorted, taking a long draught of wine. Elijah raised an eyebrow at her, and she smirked at him.

-0-

"So…" Caroline started as they reentered the hotel room, full to bursting from dinner—at which no one had died, which was a God-ordained miracle, in Caroline's opinion.

"While she is entertaining Elijah, I will do my utmost to refrain from murdering her," Klaus allowed. "That is the most any of you can expect from me—do not push your luck," he warned, gesturing at her with one long pointer finger, but there was no real malice in his tone. Caroline had expected that. He was too prideful to turn on a dime and decide that Katherine was pardoned just like that, but he had to admit that Caroline had had several good points earlier. He'd come round, she decided. It would just take some time.

"Have you told Elijah about… Henrik?" she asked quietly, setting her little clutch purse down on the table and extracting her phone to plug it in.

"No," Klaus responded in a low voice. "My brother… is uncharacteristically happy at the moment. I think I'll give him a little time before I break the spell." Caroline nodded thoughtfully, wrapping her arms around his middle and leaning her head into his chest. The last few months had been one hell of an emotional roller coaster ride for the both of them. He hugged her back, resting his cheek on top of her head.

"Wish you weren't starting school so soon," he murmured. "I know _why_ you are," he added, pulling away a little to look her in the eye. "But it is a shame."

"I know," she responded quietly. They'd only just really found each other, and there was a whole world out there beyond the confines of Virginia, USA. But, as she had to keep reminding herself, she had Klaus forever. Bonnie, on the other hand, and doing her first college experience as an actual eighteen-year-old, would not wait.

"Suppose we'll have to make the most of the time we have," Klaus murmured, a twinkle of lust out-shining the sadness in his eyes.

"Oh?" Caroline replied coyly, "and did you have any ideas for how to do that?"

"Oh, only a few thousand," Klaus responded as he leaned down to capture her lips with his own.

-0-

Elijah was nearly asleep when his phone lit up, and he rolled over to check it over the side of the bed, without disturbing Katerina. He'd received one text from Caroline Forbes.

[Did you run into us on purpose?] she asked. He pricked up his ears, listening to ensure his lover was truly asleep. She'd been upset enough about the 'coincidental meeting' without having this idea in her head as well.

[Miss Forbes,] he responded, [do you really think me so manipulative?]

[Yes] she replied bluntly. His lips twitched upward. She didn't mince words.

[Then you are a very observant young woman] he sent back, before putting his phone away and rolling over to cradle Katerina to him. He'd known there was no way he'd get Niklaus and Katerina to behave cordially to one another if he simply asked—even if he'd gotten them to agree separately, he couldn't guarantee what two such volatile personalities with five centuries of grudges would actually do in practice when they crossed paths.

What was that old adage, he wondered as he drifted off to sleep, about boiling a frog?


	10. Gold Sheets

"Look, honey, you're a _freshman_ ," the tired-looking admissions attendant reminded her. "We have to prioritize the upperclassmen. You can take the triple in Bronwyn Hall, or you can double in first floor Adams Hall and somebody can room with a different roommate. Those are your choices. Hurry up—there's a line behind ya'."

Fury coursed through Caroline's veins, and she had to work hard to keep her face looking human. This couldn't be happening, not now. She'd filled out all that paperwork, done everything she was supposed to, payed out thousands of dollars of her mom's hard-earned money, showed up to an in-person meeting when she'd been _halfway around the world,_ had to _fly back two days early_ just to be here for two minutes of paperwork… and this bored-looking woman was going to shrug her off like she was nothing more than a name on a student list.

She leaned forward, placing her palms flat on the table, and smiled sweetly. Then her pupils expanded, and in her coolest, most professional voice she said, " **you will make this happen for me**."

"We can accommodate you," the woman responded immediately, pulling out a sheet of paper from behind the stack, stamping it and handing it to her.

"Thank you," Caroline replied, glancing at the slip of paper and taking in the whole thing in a second before she slid it into a folder in her laptop bag. Apparently, the top two floors of Wilson Hall were an older style of room, with deep window wells, a fire place, a private bathroom and larger dressers. They weren't very economical on space, and the first three floors had been renovated to be more efficient, but the fourth and fifth floors were left alone for historical value, and were reserved for students with high academic honors. However, one had been left open for the next semester—until now.

" _Much better_ ," she muttered to herself, feeling satisfied as she strode back down the hallway to meet Elena, who was getting her classes sorted out in the next building over. At least that meeting had been easy for Caroline, who had actually _picked_ a major… Well, double-major. But Drama and Communications were interrelated; it wasn't that much of a stretch. She wanted to do the college thing like a normal eighteen-year-old girl first, but she had to admit to herself that the rest of her life was going to involve a whole lot of inventing and living out new identities.

She'd even gotten into Intercultural Communication in her first semester, which she'd been really excited about. She was, after all, in an intercultural relationship. Interspecies relationship, if she got technical about it… but that was weird. She decided to stick with intercultural. It could be useful, or it could be a waste of her time because she already had some experience with that, but she was willing to take the risk.

She'd glanced with envy over the other majors, wishing it was somehow possible to do philosophy, mathematics, communication, meteorology and music all at once—but she had to pace herself. And the truth was, she wasn't really confident enough to be the girl who went from being head cheerleader to majoring in anything that required calculus. She wasn't ready to sit down in a classroom full of people who would never see her as anything more than a pretty face with blonde curls and a rich boyfriend. She would, eventually, she'd told herself placatingly—when she was older, when she was a vampire playing human rather than a human with vampire abilities. For now, she'd pick a skill that would help her later on.

Her phone rang as she exited the building, and Klaus's face—a cropped selfie they'd taken with the Rialto Bridge in the background—glowed across the screen.

"I love compulsion," she purred into the speaker by way of greeting.

" _What were they giving you trouble over?"_ He asked with a laugh.

"Freshmen can't have nice dorms, even if they sign up for them well in advance and go through all the proper channels," she responded with bright sarcasm.

" _Let me guess—they've generously rented you an on-campus house_ ," he suggested.

"No," she assured him, "just a big triple. That's supposed to be reserved for students with high academic honors."

" _That's my girl_ ," he chuckled. " _Will you be an honors student, then_?"

"Not this time," she responded quietly. "This time I'm going low profile."

" _How tedious_ ," he grumbled. " _You ought to do psychology—you'd be fantastic at it_."

"I'll add it to the list," she replied with a smile. "After Elena's advisory meeting, we'll be heading home—should be back by dinner time."

" _Do hurry_ ," he said, sounding a little moody. " _I don't get you to myself for much longer this summer, Love_."

"Not to mention the number of trips I'll be making to Ikea in the next two weeks," she reminded him as she entered the Office of Advising and Academic Services and sat down in the waiting room. She heard some unintelligible comment in a disparaging voice, probably directed towards cheap home furnishings. She smirked. "Seriously though… where are we going for winter break?" she asked, relishing the thought of another wild getaway, nothing but her and Klaus and all the richness and history of the world.

" _Would you prefer classics or modern innovation_?" he asked in that smooth, accented voice that somehow made both options sound borderline pornographic. She shivered a little and her smile widened, her eyes creasing at the corners as her cheeks dimpled.

"Caroline!" Elena called as she hurried into the waiting room, stuffing a sheaf of papers into her bag and looking harried. Caroline hated to think what the poor advisor must look like. She could imagine the conversation; "I wanted to major in English, but then my mom died and I can't really do it without her… and I wanted to major in exercise science, but I barely passed high school biology… so then I was thinking marketing, but maybe I'd rather a profession where I'm not talking to so many people in a day… they all start looking like food after a while…"

" _Hurry home, Darling_ ," Klaus said, clearly hearing Elena and realizing that she'd be on her way back to him as soon as she got off the phone.

"I love you," she murmured as a goodbye.

" _I love you_ ," he echoed, and then a click at the other end informed Caroline that he'd disconnected.

"Sorry I took so long," Elena said with an exhausted sigh.

"It's okay—gave me time to argue us into our dorm room," Caroline laughed, standing up and slinging her bag over her shoulder. She figured it was best not to mention to the very, very moral Elena Gilbert that there had been compulsion involved already in their "normal Freshman year of college" project… "What classes did you get?"

"Intro Communications with you," she listed, "College Algebra," she mimed gagging, "Women in History and Intro Spanish. You?" The girls headed out to the parking lot as Caroline answered.

"Intro Comm, of course, Intercultural Comm, Intro Political Science, Acting I and Public Speaking. Oh, and University Choir—that's only once a week for one credit, though."

"That's… 21 credits in one semester," Elena added up looking a little concerned. "Isn't that overdoing it a bit?"

"Not if I want to double major and have time for a required internship inside of four years," Caroline responded, scrolling through a list of major requirements and gen-eds on her phone.

"At least you know your major," Elena groaned, glancing at the papers sticking out of her bag.

"Well, just take a bunch of intro courses for your gen-eds," Caroline shrugged as she hit the button on her keys and her car chirped in response. "Then you'll get an idea of what you want to do."

-0-

"Finally, the aesthetics department has arrived!" Damon exclaimed as the girls walked into the living room of Mikaelson mansion, intent on measuring a sofa and some ottomans that Klaus had suggested Caroline take with her for the dorm room.

"Hey, Damon," Elena greeted her boyfriend, looking understandably surprised to see him.

"I'm guessing you're vetoing anything in the gold family as far as bed linens," Klaus said as Damon shrugged in answer to the question in the doppelganger.

"Not exactly," Caroline responded, eyes taking in the two half-full glasses of bourbon and familiar tablet and laptop open on the coffee table. "Green and pink is Elena, purple and gold is Bonnie, blue and tan is me. Why?"

"See, no gold sheets for her, then," Damon quipped with the air of someone winning an argument. Klaus glowered at him as Caroline's eyes narrowed.

"I wasn't actually going to buy you gold sheets," he said placatingly before she could decide if she was pleased at his involvement or irritated that he'd stuck his nose into her interior decorating. "Horridly scratchy, cloth of gold. Not at all pleasant to sleep on. However, take a look at these," he added, handing over his tablet to show her a series of silk bedding sets.

"I thought we were shopping for dorm stuff _together_!" Elena pouted. "Getting your rich, artist boyfriend to get stuff is cheating." Caroline snickered.

"They're lovely," she admitted, handing Klaus back his tablet and sitting down on the arm of the sofa. "But, nothing on that thousand-dollar list comes in XL-twin."

"That's what I told him!" Damon exclaimed as he typed away on his laptop. It was unclear whether he was agreeing with Elena, Caroline or both. "Which is why I suggested we circumvent the problem by simply…" he turned his screen so Elena and Caroline could see, "replacing the bedframes with these easier-to-fit ones. Then they'll fit whatever fancy sheets your classy vampire hearts desire, and you're not confined to dorm-y stuff."

"We signed a waiver today stating that we wouldn't remove any furniture from the room," Elena responded immediately.

"Who cares?" Damon demanded. "Can't you just _compel away_ the pesky rules?" He glanced sidelong at Caroline, giving her the distinct impression that Klaus had let slip the situation with the dorm room. She shot him a glare, hoping that his desire for Elena to have a good room would overrule his desire to gossip about Caroline "cheating" this early into their college experience.

"Rules, yes," Caroline responded, taking Klaus's tablet back and scrolling once more through the list. "Laws of physics? No. I'm too tall for a standard twin."

"Which is what _I_ said," Klaus responded with a smirk. "Fancy those for the house, Love?" he added more quietly as Caroline clicked into the description for a sage-and-spruce sheet set. "They come in King," he added. "You should buy them." She nodded, thoughtfully, placing them on the site's wish list.

"We're going to Ikea, Tuesday," Elena announced. "It's a plan, and it's final. Besides, we have to pick out Bonnie's stuff to match ours, and her dad isn't made of money, even if you two are."

"See, though, the lovely thing about being made of money," Klaus responded, "is that I could throw in matching sets for everyone's favorite Bennet witch and never notice the expenditure."

"And what about the first time one of us says 'hey, guys, let's all go study in my nice, big dorm room?' and our classmates notice the designer towels and antique boudoir?" Caroline responded. "No, Elena's right. Ikea, Tuesday, plus all the extra home furnishings I have lying around my old house. I want those sheets though," she added quietly. "For here."

"I told you to buy them," Klaus shrugged, pressing his thumbprint against the tablet's scanner when prompted.

"What I wanna know is how are you," here Damon pointed at Klaus, "Mr. fancy immortal artistic type, gonna react when one of them plasters the room in teeny-bopper band posters?"

"Better that than classic rock, I'm guessing," Caroline chuckled. Klaus growled and gave the biggest, most exaggerated eyeroll Caroline had ever seen in her life.

"Hey, what do you have against the eighties, anyway?" Elena demanded with a raised eyebrow and folded arms. "I remember your little rant about the later twentieth century when you were pretending to be Ric."

"Rock and roll ain't noise pollution…" Damon sang mischievously as Caroline stood up and pulled out her phone.

"Yeah, good luck with this topic, you guys," she laughed, kissing Klaus's cheek and interrupting him in mid-snarl before slipping out to call Bonnie in relative quiet.

"Hey, Bon," she said after the message tone. "What time is it there? We gotta figure out some times of day to contact each other in real time to work out all this college stuff." She sat down on the railing of the balcony she'd chosen for her call, perfectly balanced. "Anyway, we got into the perfect dorm room. There's a fireplace for you to do magic stuff, window seats so we can have a view of campus while we study, and plenty of space for storing vampy contraband. It's gonna be great! If you buy and furnishing stuff while you're abroad, send me pics, okay? It's gonna be a little hard to coordinate this, but you know me; I can make it work. I love you. I hope you're having a great time with your mom. Call me soon, okay?"

-0-

As Caroline disconnected the call and opened up her email to check for any housing updates, Bonnie leaned against the railing next to her, shoulders slumped forward, sorrow pooling in her eyes. She knew she couldn't keep up the charade of traveling for much longer; on a practical level, her friends needed to know that she wouldn't be rooming with them. But if Caroline was going to compel the administration whenever she didn't get her way, then maybe they'd get the triple between the two of them. Maybe it wouldn't matter, and she could just let them keep believing she was happy and healthy—elsewhere.

She sighed, placing her translucent brown hand atop Caroline's pale one, which rested on the railing.

Then Caroline stiffened in shock, looking to her left, and lifting her hand to eye-level to examine it.

"Stupid, stupid me!" Bonnie hissed, remembering belatedly that Caroline's damaged left hand had a loose connection to the spiritual plane. If she wanted to keep her ghostly haunting of her friends a secret, she'd have to be more careful…

-0-

Far away, Matt strolled down the cobbled street, enjoying the sun, the scenery, and the music of people conversing in a language that he didn't understand. Somehow, that made the trip more magical, he thought in amusement. The mundane nature of people's conversations hid behind the veneer of unfamiliar syllables, mixing in with the scents of local food and flowers; perfumes that must've been common here were exotic to him, and so on and so forth. The newness of everything was starting to be intoxicating—Rebekah had warned him that this was to be expected as a young vampire—and he was riding the wave of it as she bundled him onto a different plane every few weeks to experience the world as (she said) it was meant to be experienced. Tiny places, infinite moments, all at once, with nothing to fear and no concerns to tie them down, because wasn't that the whole point of immortality?

It was right about then that Alexander slipped in behind him and snapped his neck. The young vampire didn't even feel himself fall.

-0-

"I'll use the whelp to bait my trap, and when Rebekah shows up, I'll dagger her, then lure in Klaus," Alexander listed, clamping his phone between his ear and his shoulder so he could talk while loading the unconscious vampire into the trunk of his car. "Then use Klaus and Rebekah as bait for Elijah and Katherine, acquire the cure in exchange for Katherine's life, locate Kol's body and the White Oak stake while Klaus is restrained, and then kill the lot of them, and wipe out the entire vampire species."

"Excellent," Quetsiya responded. "With them out of the way, I'm free to deal with Silas myself."

"What about that girl—Klaus's wench?" Alexander asked, slamming the trunk shut and climbing into the driver's seat. "Wasn't she something or other?"

"Something or other that Silas is beginning to obsess over," the ancient witch responded gleefully. "If she doesn't blunder her way into helping me take him down, then at least I can use her against him. I don't know what exactly is going on with her, but neither does he, and I can use that to my advantage."

"Be careful," Alexander cautioned. "If she makes even the indestructible Silas uncomfortable, there's got to be a reason."

"Your concern is touching, but unnecessary," Quetsiya sighed. "I've spent two thousand years watching and waiting—I know when to draw back from the fire before I get burned. You'd better watch yourself around Katerina Petrova, though. Remember when you're dealing with her; she may be younger than the Originals, but she managed to elude them for 500 years, and thrive while she survived. She's as enticing as Amara, as ruthless and two-faced as Tatia, and as determined as Elena. Don't take any chances. I NEED that cure."

"I won't let her out of my sight until I have it, don't you fret," Alexander assured his creator as the engine turned over and his headlights flickered to life. "I'll cut out her tongue before I'll listen to anything she has to say.

"By this time next year," Quetsiya announced, "we will finally have fulfilled our quest. Then you can be at peace."

"And you can ensure that those monsters _never_ know peace," the hunter finished for her.

"Sounds like heaven to me," the witch murmured.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Events in the first scene of this chapter were inspired by my real life experience with college housing, which pisses me off to this day. (Here follows a depressing personal anecdote which is not necessary to understand the story.)
> 
> When I was getting ready to go to university, my planned roommate and I filled out paperwork together, stating specifically that we wanted an apartment (we wanted a kitchen and I wanted separate bedrooms or at least a bedroom and a living space, as we were both introverts who would need some alone time for mental health. And that thing people say about don't ever live with your best friend? Yeah we were trying to preemptively manage that.) Housing availability was based on combined credits. I was transferring in with a full 66-credit associate's degree, and she'd been at the college since Freshman year, so between us we had over 120 credits. No problem right?
> 
> So I find out at the last minute that we still had to attend an on-campus meeting, like we didn't fill out paperwork months in advance with our preferences. And after driving an hour and a half to get there, and standing in a long, long line, the lady goes "there's no apartments left - and your transfer credits don't count the first semester because of reasons, which we didn't bother to tell you." She also said the only single rooms available were in the oldest, crumbliest dorm on campus (I got depressed just walking into the building.) So former bestie and I settle on a double in a better dorm. Over the next semester I learned 2 valuable things.
> 
> 1) The lady was a lying liar who lied - there were definitely singles available in other dorms, available apartments, AND single apartments. Apparently many, many current students were aware of ways around our problem - everyone except former bestie and me.
> 
> 2) When people say not to live with your best friend THEY ARE NOT KIDDING. We got on each other's nerves so much in that semester that by the time we graduated we didn't even talk anymore. (That and when I broke up with my abuser she sided with him. Which didn't exactly encourage me to pursue mending our relationship. If you originally read this story on FF and were rolling your eyes when I kept saying I was slow at updating because of mental health stuff, here's an example of what was going on for me at the time!)
> 
> I moved into an off-campus apartment alone the next semester - it was literally cheaper per month than room and board at the school, and I had my own damn kitchen AND was across the street from Aldi for a cheap, produce-heavy diet. 
> 
> And wrote the first scene in this chapter as catharsis, because oh how I wish I could have used a little compulsion to get the bored lady to tell me the truth back then. I wouldn't have spent so much time with my ex just to get some relationship-saving space between me and former bestie - although I guess if she was going to identify so strongly with someone who abused me then it's for the best that our friendship ended.
> 
> Anyway I've been out of college and both of those relationships for a couple of years now, and my mental health is slowly improving. I did a massive giveaway of fic ideas on tumblr (they're queued every day for the month of January - I'm BethNottingham013 on there if you'd like to check them out) and kept only my partly posted WIPs and 3 other ideas. I'm moving over to AO3 because I like the formatting better (hi, AO3 peeps!) and hoping that the result of all of this is that I get back into writing - at least to finish the ones I've started.
> 
> The first six chapters of the next installment are written and posted to FF - if you're reading this the day it's posted then give it a couple hours; they shoud be migrating over here after I get some food and coffee in me.


End file.
